LIBRARY 
 
 CALIFOWM 
 SAN
 
 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 
 AND OTHER ESSAYS
 
 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 
 
 AND OTHER ESSAYS 
 
 Br 
 
 THOMAS WHITTAKER 
 
 AUTHOR OF " THE NEO-PLATONISTS," ETC 
 
 LONDON 
 
 SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO, LIM. 
 
 25 HIGH STREET, BLOOMSBURY, W.C. 
 
 1906
 
 NOTE. 
 
 Of the six essays contained in this volume, 
 the first three much the larger are his- 
 torical ; the last three, positive. The first 
 of the series appeared in he Monist for 
 January, 1903 ; the fifth in Mind of the 
 same date. The rest have not hitherto been 
 published.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PACK 
 
 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA, i 
 
 CELSUS AND ORIGEN, - ~ 54 
 
 JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA, - 123 
 
 ANIMISM, RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY, - 165 
 A COMPENDIOUS CLASSIFICATION OF THE 
 
 SCIENCES, - 178 
 
 TELEOLOGY AND THE INDIVIDUAL, - - 192
 
 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA. 
 
 A REFORMER of Greek religion from within, whose 
 activity may have coincided with the first emergence 
 of the Christian propaganda from Judsea, is undoubtedly an 
 interesting historical figure. And both in ancient and in 
 modern times Apollonius of Tyana has been made the subject 
 of parallels which were probably never thought of by the author 
 of his extant Life. The first of these parallels was by Hierocles, 
 Proconsul of Bithynia under Diocletian ; in which the attempt 
 seems to have been made to show that the marvels attributed 
 to Apollonius were better authenticated than those attributed 
 to Christ. We do not possess this work itself; but we have 
 the reply of Eusebius, Bishop of Csesarea and ecclesiastical 
 historian, written after the triumph of the new faith. The 
 most elaborate modern parallel is that of F. C. Baur, first 
 published in I832. 1 Baur here attempts to show, not only 
 that there are resemblances between the Life of Apollonius by 
 Philostratus and the Gospels, but that Philostratus deliberately 
 modelled his hero on the type set forth by the Evangelists. 
 Though he was followed in this view by Zeller, it is now 
 generally rejected ; so that there is no need to enter into con- 
 troversy on the subject. It remains, however, none the less 
 interesting to try to determine the character of the reforming 
 activity of Apollonius himself. Was his predominant aim to 
 conduct the world along the path of intensified supernaturalism, 
 
 1 Republished by Zeller with two essays on related subjects under the 
 general title, Drei Abhandlungen zur Gtschichte der alien Philosophic una 
 ihres Verhtiltnisscs turn Christenthum, Leipzig, 1876. 
 
 I
 
 2 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 
 
 or was it to promote the growth of a more rational and ethical 
 religion so far as this was possible without breaking with the 
 past? 
 
 The materials for judging are contained in the Life of Apollo- 
 nius written by Philostratus early in the third century, and in 
 the extant letters ascribed to him, some of which Philostratus 
 evidently knew. Whether any of these are genuine, it is im- 
 possible to be certain; and in any case the biography of 
 Philostratus is clearly a romance. For the composition of it, 
 the writer professes to have used the memoirs of Damis, a 
 disciple of Apollonius; but he tells us that, as these were 
 wanting in literary form, he has freely worked them up. Baur 
 argues that the introduction of " Damis the Assyrian " is simply 
 a literary device. The obvious anachronism by which Philo- 
 stratus represents the Babylon visited by Apollonius as identical 
 with the Babylon of Herodotus, he also holds to be intentional. 
 It is not, he thinks, put before the reader for serious belief, but 
 only to bring out the ideal attitude of a Greek philosopher 
 confronted with Oriental ostentation. There is much to be 
 said for this view. Philostratus, who was an accomplished man 
 of letters, has nowhere the air of disclaiming credit for the skill 
 of presentation shown in his narrative, while occasionally he 
 disclaims belief in the stories narrated. He was, besides, an 
 original art-critic, as is evident from the descriptions of real or 
 imaginary pictures in another of his works ; and he puts into 
 the mouth of Apollonius aesthetic theories which he can 
 scarcely have meant us to believe were not his own. He did 
 not, of course, for a moment suppose that he was drawing up 
 the documents of a new religion, and hence had no motive for 
 concealing his methods. It was only necessary that they 
 should not be obtruded. We have before us a highly mature 
 work of literary art by an individual author who comes forward 
 in his own name. If we cannot be sure in detail about the 
 facts at the ground of the romance, we are saved from the 
 labour of trying to extricate them from stratum on stratum of 
 superimposed redactions. We know at least what type of 
 reformer Philostratus conceived Apollonius to have been. 
 
 That Apollonius was a real person born at Tyana, there is 
 no reason to doubt ; nor is there any uncertainty about the 
 general character of his life and teaching. He was in manner 
 of life a Neo-Pythagorean ascetic, and taught what would now 
 be described as a spiritualistic philosophy. The one mode of 
 reforming activity ascribed to him with absolute consistency is
 
 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 3 
 
 a vigorous campaign against animal sacrifices. Superhuman 
 powers, especially those of prophetic insight and of clairvoyance, 
 were attributed to him by common report. Dio Cassius, 1 as 
 well as Philostratus, relates that he saw in a vision the slaying 
 of Domitian. The fact that he had a quarrel with a Stoic 
 philosopher named Euphrates, who is known as a historical 
 personage, 2 is clear, though its causes can only be conjectured 
 from the account of Philostratus. For the rest, there is no 
 ground for supposing that Philostratus deviated in the general 
 spirit of his representation from the authentic type of his hero ; 
 and he must have had sources of information open to him for 
 the details, with whatever freedom he may have treated them. 
 Other Lives of Apollonius, now lost, are known to have 
 existed. 
 
 In the " Epistles of Apollonius," some of which, as has been 
 mentioned, Philostratus had before him, the type is already 
 individualised. A few points from these may be given as a 
 preliminary to the more detailed biographical account which 
 will follow. 3 The style of the most of them, it may be 
 observed, is of the laconic brevity attributed by Philostratus to 
 all the genuine letters of Apollonius. Two on the subject of 
 sacrifices, addressed to the sacerdotal bodies at Olympia and at 
 Delphi, may be quoted in full. " The gods need not sacrifices. 
 What then might one gratify them by doing ? By obtaining 
 wisdom, as I think, and by benefiting worthy men to the 
 extent of one's power. These things are dear to the gods ; 
 those are of the godless." 4 " Priests defile altars with blood ; 
 then some wonder whence cities are unfortunate, while they do 
 ill in great things. Oh folly ! Heraclitus was wise, but not 
 even he persuaded the Ephesians not to wash out mud with 
 mud." 5 The contrariety dwelt on between virtue and 
 
 1 Lxvii. 1 8. See Baur, Apollonius von Tyana und C/iristus (Drei 
 Abhandlungtn, etc., ed. Zeller, pp. iio-m). 
 
 2 A laudatory reference to him in the Epistles of the younger I'liny 
 (i. lo) is quoted by Baur, loc. cit., p. I53n. 
 
 3 The Epistles of Apollonius and the reply of Eusebius to Hieroclcs 
 are appended to Kayser's edition of Philostratus, Vol. I. For Thilostratus 
 himself I have used Westermann's edition. 
 
 4 Ep 26 : TOIS tv 'OXv/xwi'g 9e7jK(5/>cis. 
 
 5 Ep. 27 : TOIS tv AeX<o?s itpevffii;
 
 4 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 
 
 riches 1 may be passed over as a well-known philosophic com- 
 monplace ; but the way in which love of family and country is 
 brought into union with the widest cosmopolitanism seems to 
 offer something distinctive of the philosopher who, .having 
 travelled over the known world, is said to have been always 
 pleased when addressed by the name of his birthplace. While 
 it is well, he declares, to think all the earth a fatherland and 
 all men brothers and friends, as being children of God, of one 
 nature ; there being the same community of reason and of 
 passions to each and all, barbarian or Greek : yet neither men 
 nor even irrational animals can lose the memory of their home 
 and native seat or find anything to replace it.2 Men need 
 cities next after the gods ; and after the gods cities are to be 
 honoured and their interests to be placed foremost by every 
 rational being. 3 While he accepts (or is made to accept) as 
 an honour the charge that his Pythagorean philosophy seeks 
 to attain insight into the future by revelations from the gods 
 only given, as he contends, to those who are pure in life he 
 also claims for the Pythagoreans, as lamblichus did afterwards, 
 the idea of a demonstrable religion. 4 Against the credulity 
 of the time, we find the reproof addressed to the Milesians that, 
 while Thales is called their father, they in their folly accuse a 
 philosopher who predicts an earthquake of causing it. 5 A 
 distinctive point again is the protest against the exaggerated 
 cynical strain in Stoicism. In an imaginary dialogue, Euphrates 
 is made to reproach Apollonius with relieving pains and suffer- 
 ings of the body (which are no evil, according to the rigorists). 
 His answer is that the same charge might be brought against 
 the god of healing. 6 Of actual miracles nothing is said ; and 
 
 1 See especially Ep. 35 : 'Aperi) KO.I xP$V- aTa wtf W"" d.\\ri\oa 
 tva.vTHj3Ta.Ta., (jLeiovfJifvov ya.p TO Zrepov a#ei TO ZT(pov, av^av6jj.fvov $ /j.eioi. 
 TTWS oftv dwaTbv AfJitporepa irepi TOV airrbv yevfoOcu. ', ir\ijv el fj.j] Tip TUV 
 \6ycf), Trap' ols Kal 6 irXoPros dperr;. 
 
 2 Ep. 44- 
 :; Ep. II. 
 
 4 Ep. 52. Among the things received from a Pythagorean teacher, 
 Apollonius mentions, besides mathematical and medical science, 
 ffewv, ov S6^av, ftSr/ffiv da.ifj.6vuv, oi>xl 
 
 Ep. 68. 
 
 6 Ep. 8 : ToCr<5 irov Kal trpbs TOV 'A<TK\Tjinbv KOLVOV TO
 
 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 5 
 
 one who could utter the fine gnomic saying, " To lie is unfree 
 (characteristic of the unfree), truth is noble (characteristic of a 
 noble nature)," cannot well 1 have been a counterfeiter of 
 miraculous powers. A piece of practical advice that may be 
 regarded as a refinement upon this occurs in a letter to a 
 sophist on literary composition : " Since the absolutely best 
 mode of speech is hard to determine, speak in your own 
 character rather than try to imitate what is best or what you 
 suppose to be best if you have it not by nature." 2 
 
 One letter obviously different in style from the others 3 is 
 nevertheless interesting as bearing the mark of the period 
 though not of the individual ideas of Apollonius. At the end 
 there is an expression of Stoic pantheism, which, in the 
 transitional phase of the time, was often presented in fusion or 
 confusion with Platonism. Everything done or suffered in 
 appearance by the individual is to be referred to the one first 
 essence (wpdn-rj ovffia)* s.s its cause, both active and passive. 
 The teaching of Apollonius himself, so far as we can judge, 
 though not without Stoic elements, laid stress rather on the 
 transcendence of the supreme divinity. In the earlier part of 
 the letter, what is supposed to be the Platonic or Pythagorean 
 doctrine of immortality is asserted. Death and birth alike are 
 only appearance. There is alternation between the visible and 
 tangible of nature (^o-ewj) and the invisible and intangible of 
 essence (own'as), but in reality nothing is created or destroyed. 
 The process is conceived as taking place by condensation and 
 rarefaction of matter; the former being the phenomenon of 
 birth and growth, the latter of death. As may be seen, there 
 is here no strictly defined immateriality of the soul, which is 
 either identified with or very imperfectly discriminated from a 
 fiery or ethereal influx such as the Stoics took to be the basis 
 of life and thought. There seems to be nothing here specially 
 characteristic of Apollonius ; but it is clear that in the 
 speculation of the time the Platonic metaphysic was in danger 
 
 1 Ep. 83 : ifsfuSetrdau. d.!>f\eu9epov, a.\f]0eia. yevvaiov. This may have been 
 a repudiation of the yevvaiov -fei'oos permitted by Plato on occasion to his 
 philosophic guardians of the State. 
 
 2 Ep. 19. 
 S E P . 58. 
 
 4 f) Srj fs.6t>T) iroiei re Kai 7rao"x :ra<rt yivofdvi) "rdvra Sia Trdvruv 6eb 
 difStos, <5>6,ua(7i Kal Trpoffuwois d<pa.ipovfj.fri) rb tdiov ddiKOVptvri rt.
 
 6 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 
 
 of being swamped in a kind of eclectic animism. The meta- 
 physical advance to a definitely formulated immaterialism as 
 regards the soul itself had to wait for the Neo-Platonic develop- 
 ment. Neo-Platonism was in some respects a return from a 
 religious to a more scientific interest in Plato ; whose critique 
 of materialism had not hitherto been carried through so rigor- 
 ously in point of expression that the idea of incorporeal mind 
 and soul could not again be lost. 
 
 With this later development we are not at present con- 
 cerned ; and in the teaching of Apollonius himself, as presented 
 by Philostratus, there is abundant interest on the side both of 
 thought and of practice. For the phase to which he belongs, 
 if unoriginal metaphysically, was in other ways marked by 
 advances that proved the still enduring vitality of the ancient 
 culture. It was not indeed by intrinsic decay that that culture 
 disappeared, but by the invasion of alien forces. In the third 
 century it still seemed possible to preserve with modifications 
 the inherited type. The method which commended itself to 
 the minds that were still in the ascendant was that of conserv- 
 ative reform. The imperial monarchy, which no one now 
 dreamed of abolishing, was to be made the centre of institutions 
 as republican as possible in spirit. The ancient religions were 
 to be preserved in some form of union under the ethical 
 direction of philosophy. Oriental cults, severely opposed in 
 the second century, were in the third regarded with more 
 favour if only their underlying community with those of 
 Greece and Rome could be brought into view. The move- 
 ment found its precursors, both political and religious, in 
 philosphers of the first century ; among whom, as we shall see, 
 Philostratus makes it his special aim to assign the place of 
 honour to Apollonius. In more than one respect the philos- 
 opher of Tyana was a hero better adapted to the needs of the 
 time than men whose activity had been more characteristic 
 of their own age. Speculative minds were now decisively 
 turning away from Stoicism and seeking a more transcendental 
 doctrine ; and Apollonius had been a Pythagorean. The 
 impracticable character of much of the Stoic resistance to 
 monarchy during the first age of the empire was also recog- 
 nised ; and while no philosophy would have been listened to 
 that did not repudiate the language of political absolutism, the 
 need was felt of one which laid little stress on the external form 
 of government. This need too was supplied by a Platonising 
 Pythagoreanism which, while it had no more sympathy than
 
 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 7 
 
 the other doctrines with Oriental kingship, assigned a high 
 place among constitutions to a monarchy according to law. 
 To us it is visible that the facts of the situation were making 
 for a formal despotism, a monarchy by divine right, sanctioned 
 by the theocratic Church, now rapidly growing under the 
 surface of ancient life ; but this at the time was seen or sus- 
 pected by few. A still noble civilisation, lowered, as was 
 confessed, in type though extended in range, but accompanied 
 by many advances and possibilities of advance, both adminis- 
 trative and spiritual, seemed to thinking men worth preserving 
 against disruptive forces whether from without or from within. 
 
 How far Philostratus was from insisting on the Oriental 
 affinities of his hero may be seen at the opening of his first 
 book, where he begins with an apology for them. Some, it 
 appears, refused Apollonius a place among philosophers 
 precisely on the ground that he was said to have put forward 
 his doctrine and discipline as revelations from the gods. 
 Philostratus therefore sets himself to show that, in spite of all 
 that can be urged on that ground, he was a sane and philo- 
 sophical cultivator of true wisdom as understood among the 
 Greeks. Earlier philosophers also were believed to have been 
 enlightened by divine revelations; and not only Pythagoras 
 himself, but Democritus and Plato and others, had frequented 
 Eastern and Egyptian sages and priests : yet they were not 
 suspected of " magic." His " daemonic sign " is not brought 
 as an accusation against Socrates. Anaxagoras made meteoro- 
 logical predictions ; and these are looked upon as instances 
 of his wisdom. Why then should similar predictions of the 
 future by Apollonius be ascribed to magical arts? Since, 
 however, he is decried as a magician, and is not generally 
 known in his true character, I have tried, says Philostratus, to 
 bring together the facts from all accessible sources. 
 
 The memoirs of Damis, the disciple and companion of 
 Apollonius, he proceeds to explain, were made known to the 
 Empress Julia Domna (the wife of Septimius Severus) by a 
 relation of Damis, and were committed by her to Philostratus, 
 who was a member of her literary circle. 1 Damis, being an 
 Assyrian by birth, was not a skilled writer; 2 but Philostratus 
 has put into shape the materials supplied by him. These, we 
 are to suppose, furnish the groundwork of the narrative. 
 
 'i. 3. a i. 19.
 
 8 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 
 
 The story begins with some legends about the birth ot 
 Apollonius, agreeably and romantically told. Before his birth 
 he was announced to his mother by " Proteus, the Egyptian 
 god," as an incarnation of himself. " The country people say 
 that he was a son of Zeus, but he calls himself the son of 
 Apollonius." 1 At the age of fourteen he was taken by his 
 father to be instructed by a distinguished rhetorician at Tarsus. 
 Disliking the luxury of the city, he was permitted to migrate 
 to the neighbouring ^Egse, where there was a temple of Ascle- 
 pius. He gave attention to all the philosophies, but attached 
 himself to that of Pythagoras. His Pythagorean teacher did 
 not live according to the principles he taught; but Apollo- 
 nius, while not ceasing to love his preceptor, aimed at practis- 
 ing the Pythagorean life in all its austerity. Beginning, as he 
 said, like physicians, with discipline of the body, he gave up 
 animal food, both as impure and as coarsening to the intellect. 
 Wine also he gave up, not indeed as impure, but because it 
 makes turbid the aether in the soul. He wore linen garments, 
 rejecting those made from the skins or clothing of animals ; 
 went barefoot ; let his hair grow long ; and took up his abode 
 in the temple. There, Philostratus relates, the god used to 
 appear in person. Apollonius, with his approval, blames the 
 offering beforehand of costly sacrifices, which seem to him to 
 be in intention bribes ; and bids the priest dismiss a wealthy 
 suppliant, who is a wrongdoer, with his gifts. The gods, he 
 observes, are most just, and will not consent to be bought off 
 in this way. To another evil-minded suitor, he declines the 
 office of mediator, telling him that the gods welcome the good 
 without intermediaries. 2 When he had come of age, he 
 returned to Tyana, having made the temple at ^Egas, says his 
 biographer, a Lyceum and an Academy ; for it resounded with 
 all philosophy. 
 
 At home, he reformed a debauched elder brother ; and when 
 he received his patrimony, distributed most of it among his 
 poor relations, reserving only a small portion for himself. 
 Going beyond the famous precept of Pythagoras, that a man 
 should be faithful to his wife, he resolved on a life of chaste 
 celibacy, and kept his resolution even in youth. According to 
 
 ] i. 6. 
 
 JM. 12 (l): " v<rTr)(r6v fj* " ^17 " r$ 0e." 65' vTroXafluv " teal ri voi Sei 
 TOV %v<rr/i<roi>Tos," elirev "el x/^aros et ; roi)y yap cnrovdaiovs ol Osol Ka.i &vev
 
 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 9 
 
 the Pythagorean rule, he submitted to the probation of five 
 years' silence. During this time, which he passed partly in 
 Pamphylia and partly in Cilicia, he was able to calm factions 
 about games by mere signs. This, says Philostratus, was not 
 so difficult ; for people who quarrel about dancers and horses 
 are easily made ashamed of themselves. It was less easy to 
 quell a tumult caused by a famine. This Apollonius did at 
 Aspendus in Pamphylia, where the people were going to burn 
 the prefect, though he had taken refuge by a statue of the 
 Emperor. And at that time, which was in the reign of Tibe- 
 rius, the Emperor's statues were more terrible and more 
 inviolable than those of the Olympian Zeus. The prefect, on 
 being questioned by signs, protested his innocence, and ac- 
 cused certain powerful citizens, who were refusing to sell corn 
 and keeping it back to export at a profit. To them Apollo- 
 nius addressed a note threatening expulsion from Earth, who 
 is the mother of all, for she is just, but whom they, being 
 unjust, have made the mother of themselves alone. In fear of 
 this threat they yielded and filled the market-place with corn- 
 
 Having completed his probation, Apollonius visited the 
 great Antioch. He found the people there not only wanting 
 in mental culture, but luxurious and effeminate ; and, to judge 
 from the report of Philostratus, seems to have liked that 
 "cradle of the Church" no better than Julian did afterwards. 
 Philostratus here excuses himself for relating myths connected 
 with the temple of Apollo Daphnaeus. His purpose, he 
 remarks, is not to mythologise, 1 but to explain how Apollonius 
 came to utter the wish that the god would turn the " semi- 
 barbarous and uncultivated " inhabitants, with their want of all 
 seriousness, into trees, so that thus they might give forth some 
 sound worth listening to. Visiting the temples, he sought to 
 bring back the Hellenic rites to their primitive form : when 
 the rites were alien, he tried to discover their original meaning 
 and to get them corrected in accordance with it. His mode 
 of exposition was not disputatious but magisterial, and this at 
 least gave him some influence with the men of Antioch. 2 
 
 From Antioch he set out with two attendants to visit the 
 Brahmans of India, and, in the course of his journey, the Magi 
 of Babylon and Susa. At Nineveh, Damis, a native of the 
 
 1 i. 1 6 (2) : ovx virfp (jLvBoXtryias ravra. 
 
 2 i. 17 (2) : /cat irforpt<pf>> ts eavritf dvdpuvovs a^ovcordrovs.
 
 io APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 
 
 place, asks and obtains leave to become his companion. 
 Among the Arabians, Apollonius acquires the knowledge they 
 have of the speech of animals. Proceeding on his journey, he 
 encounters a satrap of King Vardanes, the " Mede," who has 
 lately recovered the empire, and whose officials are known as 
 the King's "Eyes" and "Ears." Still, as in the days of 
 Aristophanes, these Oriental titles seem adapted to produce 
 an effect of the grotesque and to form part of the traditional 
 picture of Western Asiatic despotism. We need not try to 
 refer the whole account to the age of Apollonius, though 
 chronologically the Parthian king Bardanes corresponds to the 
 approximate date. The general representation is sufficiently 
 conformable to the revival of the Persian monarchy under the 
 Sassanidae in the time of Philostratus himself, decked out with 
 circumstances from the historical records of the ancient empire. 
 The narrative is obviously written with a view to contrasting 
 the simplicity and independence of the philosopher with the 
 combination of despotism, luxury, and elaborate mechanical 
 art that had distinguished the old civilisations of those regions. 
 Nor is the conception, taken broadly, untrue. The difference 
 of attitude here and in the description of the Indian journey 
 which follows is notable. The Greeks by the time of Philo- 
 stratus had accumulated some knowledge of India ; and, vague 
 as this must have been, it is evident that they had already 
 detected the profoundly philosophical character of the Indian 
 intellect. Thus we are told nothing of what Apollonius was 
 able to learn from the Magi ; a whereas in the account of his 
 stay in India there is abundance of philosophical interchange 
 of thought. A relatively high but unspeculative religion such 
 as Zoroastrianism or Judaism seems never to have appealed to 
 the Greek mind as did even merely general reports on the 
 tenets of the Brahmans and afterwards of the Buddhists. 
 
 Among the decorations of the royal palace at Babylon, we 
 are told, figures of Greek legend were to be seen, Orpheus 
 appearing frequently. Perhaps it is his tiara and his Oriental 
 dress that they are pleased with there : it is not the charm of 
 his music and song. The capture of Athens was represented, 
 and the Persian victory at Thermopylae, " and things still more 
 Medic, rivers diverted from their course, and the bridging of 
 
 1 Questioned by Damis (i. 26), he says that they are cro^ol fj.4f, d\\' ov 
 v&vro..
 
 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA n 
 
 the sea, and how Athos was cut through." 1 Apollonius refuses 
 to do obeisance to the golden image of the King. The King, 
 who knows him already by repute, is pleased to hear of his 
 coming and sends for him. Being about to sacrifice a white 
 horse to the Sun, he asks Apollonius to accompany him, but 
 the Pythagorean philosopher replies : " You, O King, sacrifice 
 in your own manner, and give me leave to sacrifice in mine." 
 Then, having thrown frankincense on the flame, and uttered a 
 prayer to the god, he departs, so as to have no share in an 
 offering of blood. 2 When the King invites him to join in 
 hunting the animals which the barbarians preserve in their 
 parks or " paradises," he reminds him that he could not even 
 be present at his sacrifices, and expresses disapproval of the 
 pleasure taken in the hunting of wild animals kept for sport. 3 
 In accordance with the general spirit of the picture, he is 
 represented as neither dazzled by the regal magnificence nor 
 impressed by material marvels such as the tunnel under the 
 Euphrates and the walls of Ecbatana. The King, when he 
 takes leave, provides him with the means of continuing his 
 journey to India ; and Apollonius describes him to his com- 
 panions as an excellent man and worthy of a better fate than 
 to rule over barbarians. 
 
 Damis says that in crossing the Indian Caucasus he saw the 
 fetters of Prometheus hanging from the rocks, though it was 
 not easy to tell of what material they were composed. Apollo- 
 nius frightened off a hobgoblin appearing by moonlight. Then, 
 after these and other strange stories, there follows a remarkable 
 disquisition on the inwardness of the Divine. 4 Apollonius 
 questions Damis about the effect on his mind of ascending so 
 high a mountain-range. Damis thinks that he ought to be 
 wiser, passing over such a lofty and trackless spot : " For," 
 said he, looking up at the summit, " you hear from our guide 
 that the barbarians make it to be the house of the gods." 
 Moreover, sages like Anaxagoras and Thales are said to have 
 contemplated the heavens from just such elevations. " Yet," 
 he confesses, " I, having ascended the loftiest height of all, 
 shall go down no wiser than I was before." " Nor did they," 
 replies Apollonius, " merely by such prospects, which display 
 
 J i. 25. 2 i. 31. 
 
 3 i. 38 : Kal dXXwj oi>x T)5b Orjpiois /3e/3a<ra'r/x^j'oiJ /cai vapa. rrjv <f>i'<nv 
 favrCiv S 
 4 ii. 5.
 
 12 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 
 
 only bluer skies and larger stars and the sun rising from the 
 night sights visible also to shepherds and goatherds : but how 
 the divinity cares for the human race, and how it delights in 
 being served by it, and what is virtue and what justice and 
 temperance, neither will Athos show those that climb it nor 
 Olympus admired of the poets, unless the soul see through 
 them, which, if it take hold of them pure and undefiled, darts 
 farther than this Caucasus." 
 
 Indian nomads having furnished the wayfarers with palm- 
 wine and honey, Damis thinks Apollonius can have no objec- 
 tion to tasting this wine, as it is not made from the grape. 
 Apollonius proves to him that it is really wine, just as coins of 
 bronze are no less money than coins of silver or gold. More- 
 over Bacchus, whose mountain of Nysa is close at hand, will 
 not be angry with him for not drinking wine at all ; but, if he 
 refuses that which comes from the vine and yet drinks that 
 which is made from dates, the god will be angry and think his 
 gift disdained. And other wine, as well as that from grapes, 
 intoxicates, as may be seen in the case of the Indians who 
 drink it. This, however, has been said only to excuse himself, 
 since he is bound by a vow. To his companions he does not 
 wish to forbid wine, nor even flesh. 1 
 
 They meet a boy riding on an elephant, and Damis wonders 
 at his skill in managing such a huge beast. Apollonius by 
 questioning brings out that the credit is due not so much to 
 the boy's skill as to the self-restraint of the animal. Philo- 
 stratus goes on himself to discuss the various accounts of the 
 elephant, one of them by the Libyan King Juba. The general 
 conclusion is that elephants are second only to man in practical 
 sagacity. 
 
 King Vardanes has sent a letter to the satrap placed over 
 the Indus, requesting him to conduct Apollonius on his way. 
 He supplies him with the means of navigating the river, and 
 gives him a letter to his own king. Here Philostratus takes 
 occasion to compare the Indus with the Nile, expressing 
 scepticism in both cases as to the snow which is said to lie 
 upon the mountains and to augment the stream by melting. 2 
 At Taxila was the king's palace. The dress of the Indians is 
 of linen and of " byssus," which comes from a plant. 
 
 Visiting the temple before the city-walls, the travellers find 
 representations with metallic materials on brazen tablets.
 
 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 13 
 
 These were comparable for expression to the works of the best 
 Greek painters. 1 The defeat of Porus and the clemency of 
 Alexander were among the subjects represented. In a 
 dialogue on painting and imitative art generally, 2 Apollonius 
 draws the attention of Damis to the shapes seen in the clouds, 
 which appear to us like centaurs and other forms of living 
 things, known and unknown. He educes the conclusion that 
 while such shapes are casual so far as external nature is con- 
 cerned, there is yet an imitative faculty manifested in our 
 seeing them. This faculty is in us. For man is naturally 
 imitative, even when he has not acquired the power of drawing 
 with the hand; and it is this natural imitative faculty, 
 spontaneously exercising itself, that makes us see such shapes. 
 Nor can the faculty be absent in those who merely view 
 pictures, at least if they are to take pleasure in them. To 
 make possible the pleasure in artistic representations, there 
 must be an active power of supplying something from our- 
 selves. This is shown in the case of paintings in black and 
 white. Draw correctly the features of an Indian in white, and 
 he will appear to the fancy as dark ; the colour being filled in 
 from past experience. So likewise in viewing the picture by 
 Timomachus of the madness of Ajax : he who is to regard it 
 with admiration must bring to it some image of Ajax and some 
 notion of the whole sequence of events of which his madness 
 formed part. The figures on brass seen in the temple are to 
 be classed, Apollonius proceeds, not under the head of mere 
 metal-working (xo-^evriK^), but as products of some art inter- 
 mediate between that and painting in the special sense. It is 
 an art, he concludes, most like that of Hephaestus in Homer's 
 description of the shield of Achilles. 
 
 The king, whose name is Phraotes, invites Apollonius to stay 
 for three days. Describing the construction of the city as 
 viewed by the company, and in particular the temple of the 
 Sun, Philostratus takes occasion to note the " symbolical 
 manner" in which the statue of the god was fashioned, a 
 manner, he remarks, common to the sacred art of all the 
 barbarians. 3 The Greek sage admired the modesty in the 
 ordering of the palace as compared with the luxury of Babylon. 
 In conversing with the king, Apollonius finds him to be a true 
 philosopher. Phraotes, having dismissed the interpreter, 
 
 Mi. 20 (2). 2 ii. :2. 3 ii. 24.
 
 i 4 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 
 
 requests Apollonius in Greek to let him join him at a banquet. 
 On being asked why he puts his invitation in this form, he 
 replies that it is because he regards wisdom as more kingly 
 than his own rank. 1 At the banquet Apollonius asks him how 
 he acquired Greek and came to be possessed of philosophy. 
 The king smiling returns : " As the people of old times 
 inquired of those who came to their coasts whether they were 
 robbers, because that mode of life, though grievous, was common, 
 so you Greeks seem to inquire of all who come in contact with 
 you whether they are philosophers; so much do you think 
 philosophy, though the divinest thing that can fall to the lot of 
 men, to be the affair of every one. And indeed I hear that 
 most of those who profess philosophy among you are in fact 
 robbers ; the reason being that, while you have laws to punish 
 coiners of false money and such people, you have no law for 
 trying those who claim to be philosophers and for excluding 
 pretenders." 2 
 
 He then proceeds to explain that in India there are few pro- 
 fessional philosophers, and that these are carefully tested be- 
 fore they are allowed to enter upon the philosophic life. First 
 their ancestors for three generations back must have done 
 nothing disgraceful ; this being ascertained from public records. 
 In the next place the candidates, on offering themselves at the 
 age of eighteen, are examined in respect both of their moral 
 and intellectual fitness. The examiners 3 make use especially 
 of the indications of physiognomy. For where philosophy is 
 held in high honour, as in India, it is most necessary that those 
 who profess it should be subjected to every kind of test. 
 Next Phraotes relates how he himself came to receive a 
 philosophical education. His grandfather was king before 
 him ; but his father, having been dispossessed during his 
 minority, was sent for refuge to a foreign king. This king, 
 who had a better realm than his own hereditary one, would 
 have adopted him ; but he preferred, as he said, not to con- 
 tend with fortune, and obtained leave to devote himself to 
 philosophy, so that he might bear his ills more easily. He 
 afterwards married the king's daughter, and brought up his son 
 Phraotes to follow the philosophic life. To this end, tie taught 
 
 1 ii. 27 (l): rb yap pa<n\iKi!>Tepov ao4>ia. Hx eL - 
 
 2 ii. 29. 
 
 3 Described (ii. 30) as <r<xf>oL re /cat <j>v<riKoi dvopts.
 
 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 15 
 
 him Greek. The sages in consequence readily received him 
 as a pupil at twelve, though this was earlier than the usual 
 age ; for they regard a knowledge of Greek as a preparation 
 for training in philosophy. l Lastly, Phraotes relates how he 
 came to be restored to his kingdom. Apollonius then asks 
 him if the sages he has spoken of did not become subject to 
 Alexander and appear before him to expound their physical 
 philosophy. The King replies that Alexander indeed came in 
 contact with some who profess wisdom of a kind, but who are 
 really a race of warriors. The genuine philosophers of India 
 are those who dwell between the Hyphasis and the Ganges, 
 and to their country his expedition did not extend. Had he 
 gone on, he could never have taken their tower, which, with- 
 out preparation, they are able to defend by superhuman 
 means. 2 
 
 The next day at dawn the King comes to the chamber of 
 Apollonius and rallies him on his water-drinking. Those who 
 do not drink wine, he says, do not sleep well. Apollonius 
 replying that they sleep more quietly than those who go to bed 
 drunk, the King protests against the sophistry, and explains 
 that his meaning was that those who drink wine in moderation 
 sleep better than those who drink none at all. This leads to 
 an argument in form. Apollonius contends that even moderate 
 wine-drinkers, while not excited to hallucination, are yet liable 
 to be affected by pleasing illusions, and that these too are 
 troubling to the soul and sometimes prevent sleep. They that 
 drink no wine at all remain always equable, neither elated by 
 good fortune nor dejected by bad. Moreover, it is only to the 
 soul untroubled with wine that true divinations come in dreams. 
 Phraotes, having heard the argument, asks Apollonius if he will 
 make him one of his company ; but he puts the question by 
 with the remark that it is good for kings to be conversant mod- 
 erately with philosophy, but that a too exact and overstrained 
 devotion to it would seem unbecoming and pedantic in their 
 station.* 
 
 At the end of the visit, Phraotes sends Apollonius and his 
 companions on their journey with new provisions and a letter 
 to larchas, " the eldest of the sages." They arrive at the plain 
 in which Porus is said to have fought with Alexander. Beyond 
 the Hyphasis they come upon thirty altars inscribed by the 
 
 1 ii 31. Here and later the question occurs, Is it possible that anything 
 was known or conjectured as to the affinity between Greek and Sanskrit ? 
 
 2 ii. 33- 3 37-
 
 1 6 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 
 
 Macedonian conqueror to his father Ammon, his brother 
 Hercules, and the other gods. There is also a stele, they 
 record, marking the place where the expedition stopped. 
 This, Philostratus conjectures, was erected not by Alexander 
 himself but by those beyond the Hyphasis, pluming them- 
 selves on his not having been able to go further. 
 
 The journey to the remoter regions is accompanied by more 
 and more marvels, zoological and other, which however are 
 related not without occasional touches of scepticism. At last 
 we reach the Tower of the Sages ; whom the Indians fear more 
 than the King, because the King himself has to consult them 
 about everything that is to be said or done. 1 A young man 
 sent to meet Apollonius addresses him in Greek ; at which the 
 travellers are not surprised, since all in the neighbouring village 
 speak Greek. He brings a message from the sages inviting 
 or rather commanding '* him to come. In the form of 
 expression Apollonius recognises something Pythagorean. 
 
 Traces were still apparent of the rout of Bacchus, who with 
 Hercules had once made an unsuccessful assault on the tower. 
 The images of the gods were like the most ancient of those 
 among the Greeks, and the rites observed were Hellenic. 
 Apollonius himself, says Philostratus, has described the 
 Brahmans. " They dwell upon the earth and not on it, and 
 are fortified without walls, and possess nothing save the pos- 
 sessions of all men." 3 Out of this the biographer, on the 
 authority of Damis, constructs an accouut of the Brahmans 
 according to which they raise themselves in the air when they 
 choose not for the sake of vainglory, but to be nearer the 
 Sun-god, to whom they pray and are furnished with every- 
 thing as a spontaneous gift of the earth. Perhaps the con- 
 jecture is permissible that we have here some real saying of 
 Apollonius misapprehended by a disciple. 
 
 larchas addresses Apollonius in Greek, and gives proof that 
 he has the minutest knowledge of his whole history. Going in 
 choral procession to the temple, the Brahmans chanted an 
 ode like the paean of Sophocles which is sung at Athens to 
 Asclepius. After the service of the gods, in which Apollonius 
 
 Mil. 10 (2). 
 
 2 iii 12 : KeXei/own -yi/j avrol. 
 
 3 in 15 (l) : dSof 'IvSoi)? Bpaxf^avas otKoOvrat firi r?jj yrjs KOVK in' 
 Kai dreix^rws rereixi-ffpfrovs, xal ovdtv /ce/crjjweVoi j ^ TO iravruv.
 
 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 17 
 
 had taken part, he asks larchas if the Brahmans, knowing all 
 things else, " know themselves." larchas instantly replies that 
 it is in consequence of knowing first themselves that they know 
 all things. " What then," asks Apollonius, " do you think your- 
 selves to be ? " " Gods " he answered ; and, being asked why, 
 " Because," he said, " we are good men." In answer to the 
 question, what they think about the soul, he replied, "We hold 
 the doctrine that Pythagoras handed down to you, and we to 
 the Egyptians." Apollonius then asks whether, as Pythagoras 
 declared himself to have been Euphorbus, larchas too can 
 say that before he came into this body he was one of the 
 Trojans or Achseans or some one else. larchas thereupon 
 makes the observation that the Greeks are too much pre- 
 occupied with the Trojan war and its heroes, and neglect the 
 greater number of more divine men whom their own land 
 and the land of the Egyptians and that of the Indians bore. 
 Then he says that he too will declare who he was. He 
 proceeds to relate the history of an ancient Indian king 
 named Ganges, who was the son of the River-god. In 
 that he founded cities instead of destroying them, and 
 drove back an invasion of the Scythians from beyond Caucasus 
 instead of bringing the yoke of slavery upon another city, 1 this 
 king was superior to Achilles. More of his deeds would 
 larchas record if he did not shrink from praising himself. For 
 he, at the age of four, revealed his identity by discovering 
 seven swords embedded in the earth by King Ganges, and 
 now sought for to fulfil a command of the gods. He then 
 asks Apollonius if he also knows who he was formerly. 
 Apollonius replies that he does, but that his position was an 
 inglorious one. He was the steersman of an Egyptian ship. 
 In that capacity, however, he once performed a just deed in 
 refusing to betray his ship to Phoenician pirates. This leads 
 to a question about the use of the word "justice," afterwards 
 more fully discussed when Apollonius visits Egypt. larchas 
 raises the problem by his criticism that the Greeks seem to 
 think the absence of injustice equivalent to justice, whereas 
 a positive conception is needed. 2 
 
 During the visit of Apollonius to the dwelling of the sages, 
 the King entered. He was not a philosopher like Phraotes, but 
 
 1 iii. 2O (3) : /cat rav 
 2 iii. 25.
 
 1 8 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 
 
 came arrayed more in the fashion of the Medes, and full 
 of pomp. While the sages themselves ate sparingly, abundance 
 was provided for the King ; though it is not lawful for him to 
 partake of the flesh of animals in their presence. He 
 approaches with profound respect the sages who keep their seats. 
 For the repast, self-moving tripods come in, and there are 
 automata to serve as cup-bearers. Apollonius asks larchas 
 why he sees precisely eighteen Brahmans present, since eighteen 
 is neither a " square number " nor any other of those that are 
 in repute. larchas replies : " Neither are we slaves to number nor 
 number to us." * Sometimes they are more, and sometimes fewer, 
 according as there are more or fewer of sufficient wisdom and 
 virtue to be chosen. Then he goes on to blame the Greek 
 democratic mode of appointing to offices by lot, and the 
 fixing of ruling bodies in the Greek cities at a particular 
 number. The king interrupts the conversation by asking 
 questions about the Greeks, of whom, however, he has a mean 
 opinion ; imagining, for example, that the Athenians had been 
 enslaved by Xerxes. Apollonius corrects this impression. 
 Xerxes, he maintains, was unfortunate in not having died as 
 well as been defeated at the hands of the Greeks, who in that 
 case would have instituted games in his honour, thinking as 
 they do that it is a praise to themselves to praise those whom 
 they have vanquished. The king explains that he had got his 
 false opinion from the Egyp'.ans, who abuse the Greeks as 
 borrowers of everything from .hem selves, and as a race of law- 
 less cheats. He invites Apo lonius to be his guest, but the 
 invitation is declined. 
 
 larchas and his associates, questioned by Apollonius as to 
 their views on the constitution of the world, reply that they 
 hold it to consist of elements ( o-rotxdwo). These are the four 
 elements of water and air and earth and fire, together with 
 ether as the fifth. No element came into being before the 
 others, but all exist together as parts of the living whole. This 
 is at once male and female, and is held in unison by love of 
 itself. The parts of the world are governed by the mind that 
 is in it. As bearing an analogy to this government of the 
 fabric by mind, larchas describes a merchant-ship such as 
 the Egyptians send to India. In the vessel of the world, the 
 first place is to be assigned to God the begetter of this animated 
 universe (0v yevfropi. rovSf TOV ftSoi;) the next to the gods who 
 
 Hii. 30 (2) : Q&6' rifle's apiSpy dov\eio/Jif>>
 
 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 19 
 
 preside over the parts. Of such deities, following the poets, 
 we may admit many, of sky and sea and springs and earth 
 and under the earth. The place beneath the earth, however, 
 since they sing of it as an abode of horror and destruction, does 
 not, if it exists, belong properly to the world. 1 
 
 As an illustration of the powers of the sages, some extra- 
 ordinary cures are related. A woman comes and explains how 
 her son is possessed by a dissembling and lying demon. One 
 of the Brahmans gives her a formula of exorcism addressed to 
 the demon.' 2 A cripple, and a blind man, and a man with 
 his hand paralysed are healed, and recipes are given to effect 
 other cures. 
 
 According to his report, Damis was himself present at the 
 dialectical discussions. The study of astrology and divination 
 and sacrifices was pursued only by Apollonius with larchas. 
 Philostratus mentions <vorks of Apollonius on these subjects ; 
 but remarks that in his own opinion astrological prediction, 
 with all such divination, is beyond the scope of human nature : 
 whether anyone has attained to it he does not profess to know. 
 The work of Apollonius on Sacrifices is in so many hands, 
 and is so well and characteristically composed, that exposition 
 of it is unnecessary. 
 
 Since Damis has given an account of a conversation on the 
 strange animals and so forth of India, Philostratus, while declin- 
 ing to commit himself to the truth of the stories, will not 
 wholly pass the subject by. 4 For the rest, the account of the 
 Indian journey ends, as it begins, with enough of the marvellous. 
 Philostratus was on the whole content to put into literary form 
 the travellers' tales he knew ; hinting sometimes to the less 
 credulous his uncertainty as to what grains of truth might be 
 found in the more extraordinary of them. 
 
 After a stay of four months, Apollonius leaves the Brahmans. 
 A letter is given as from him in which he is made to say that 
 he has received from them the power of going through the sky 
 (Sta TOV oi'pavoO iropeiWflcu) and of conversing with them at a distance 
 as if they were present. 5 He and his companions return to 
 the region of the Indus, then put to sea, and sail up the 
 Euphrates to Babylon. Returning to the Roman Empire, they 
 
 1 iii. 34, 35. 2 iii. 38. 3 iii. 41 (2). 
 
 4 Hi. 45 (l) (ca ' y&P K^pSos fir] /txijTe iri(TTeijeu> /J.JT' airuTTfiv iraffiv. 
 5 iii. 51.
 
 2 o APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 
 
 go to Antioch ; but, finding it as insolently indifferent as ever 
 to Hellenic culture, 1 they put to sea again at Seleucia, and 
 thence to Cyprus. From Cyprus they proceed to Ionia, 
 where Apollonius is held in much honour. 
 
 When he came to Ephesus, we are told, 2 even the artisans 
 left their work to follow him. He delivered a discourse to the 
 Ephesians in favour of a voluntary community of goods ; 
 teaching by the example of a sparrow that came to call the 
 others to join him in feasting on the corn spilt by a boy carry- 
 ing a basket. He foresaw a threatening pestilence, but, as they 
 did not heed his warnings, he went to the other parts of Ionia ; 
 continuing everywhere his reforming activity and his salutary 
 discourses. 3 
 
 A discourse at Smyrna is given 4 in which he exhorts the 
 Smyrnseans to make themselves an object of pride even more 
 than the beauty of their city. For although it is the fairest of 
 all cities that are under the sun, and possesses the sea, and has 
 the springs of the west wind, yet it is better for it to be 
 crowned with men than with porticoes and paintings and 
 greater abundance of gold. Buildings are seen only in that 
 part of the earth where they are; but good men are seen 
 everywhere and spoken of everywhere, and render the city they 
 have sprung from as wide as the extent of land they penetrate. 
 Cities that are fair externally are indeed like the Phidian image 
 of Zeus at Olympia : but those that have men that reach 
 every part of the world are like the Homeric Zeus, who is 
 suggested to thought in various forms, and as moving through 
 the heaven, and so is a more wonderful piece of work than the 
 seated statue of ivory visible to the eye. Discussing politics 
 with the Smyrnaeans, he told them that a rightly ordered city 
 has need of concord in variance. 5 That is to say, each must 
 make it his ambition to be better than the rest in something. 
 The ancient Spartans were wrong in their exclusive devotion 
 to military affairs. Each ought to do what he knows best and 
 can do best. If one gains distinction by becoming a popular 
 
 ' l iii. 58 : rfjs 'Avnoxeta-s vj^#ws vjSpifoticrrjs Kal 
 
 2 iv. I. 
 
 3 iv. 4 : diop8ovfj.fvos ra Trap' eKa<rroij ical 5ia.\ey6fJ.evos aft n fftar^fnov rots 
 Trapovffiv. 
 
 4 iv. 7. 5 iv. 8 (i) : o/torotaj <rra<riafoi5<r?7S.
 
 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 21 
 
 leader, another by wisdom, another by amassing wealth for the 
 common good, and so forth, then the whole city will stand 
 firm. This he illustrates by the example of a ship with its 
 division of employment. 
 
 The plague having actually fallen upon Ephesus, the Ephe- 
 sians sent an embassy to Apollonius. He was there on the 
 instant as Pythagoras was at Thurium and Metapontum at 
 the same time and stayed the plague by destroying a demon 
 in the guise of an old beggar-man, revealed afterwards as a 
 monstrous beast.i He decided on a voyage to Greece, but 
 first visited the tomb of Achilles in the Troad. When they 
 were afterwards sailing the Euboic Sea, Damis questioned him 
 about his visit, and Apollonius recounted his conversation 
 with the shade of the hero, which disappeared with a glimmer 
 at cockcrow. 2 Arriving at the Piraeus at the time of the 
 Eleusinian mysteries, he was joined on his way to Athens by 
 ten young men who were about to set sail to Ionia to see him. 
 He offers himself for initiation in the mysteries ; but the 
 hierophant raises objection to him as an enchanter and as 
 " not pure in respect of divine things." Made aware of the 
 popular disapproval, he changes his tone ; but Apollonius now 
 declines initiation till another time ; mentioning the name of 
 the successor to the office, who, as he foresees, will initiate 
 him. At Athens, in deference to the devotional spirit of the 
 place, he first discoursed about sacrifices, thus refuting the 
 calumnious and ignorant assertion of the hierophant. 3 A 
 youth who interrupts a discourse of his with inane laughter he 
 finds to be under demoniacal possession. The demon, being 
 commanded to go out of him and to give a sign of his 
 departure, says that he will throw down a statue on his way. 
 This he does to the astonishment of the audience. The youth 
 afterwards followed the philosophic mode of life. 4 Hearing 
 of the frivolities with which the Athenians were now accus- 
 tomed to celebrate the Dionysia, Apollonius rebuked them 
 by reminding them of the exploits of their ancestors and of 
 
 1 iv. 10. 
 
 2 iv. 16 (6): airi)\0e %vv dtTTpairy peTpiq: *al yap 5r) K 
 ijirrovTO. 
 
 iv. 19 : rls yap IT' wyOr) TO. da</x<5/ua (J.r) KaOapbv elvai TOV <f>i\offo<poiivTa, 
 ol 0tol Oepawevrtoi ;
 
 22 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 
 
 their legendary connexion with Boreas, the most masculine of 
 the winds. Another abuse which he arrested at Athens was 
 the introduction of gladiatorial exhibitions, which were going 
 on, Philostratus tells us, at Corinth in his own day. 
 
 In a journey to Thessaly, Apollonius visited the tomb of 
 Leonidas, which he all but embraced. 1 When his companions 
 were disputing which was the highest mountain in Greece, he 
 ascended the height where the Spartans had been overwhelmed 
 by the Persian arrows, and said that those who died there for 
 liberty had equalled it to (Eta and raised it above many an 
 Olympus. In the account of his residence at Corinth we come 
 upon the original of the story of Keats's Lamia." 2 This 
 occurrence, says Philostratus, was already well known, but only 
 in general outline, and as having taken place in central Greece. 
 He has given the details for the first time from the record of 
 Damis. At Olympia, receiving an invitation to Sparta from a 
 Lacedaemonian embassy which he observed to be full of luxury, 
 Apollonius wrote to the ephors on the subject and brought 
 about a restoration of the ancient manners. A conceited 
 youth submitted to him a long panegyric on Zeus. The 
 philosopher asked him if he had ever written in praise of his 
 own father. He replied that he should have liked to do so, 
 but found that he could not do it adequately. "Then," 
 replied Apollonius, irritated as he was apt to be by vulgar 
 pretence, 3 " If you do not think you can fitly praise your 
 father whom you know, do you not see that, in undertaking to 
 praise the father of gods and men and the fashioner of all that 
 is around us and above us, you have entered upon a task 
 beyon' 1 human powers ? " 
 
 One incident of his visit to Sparta may be quoted for the 
 light it throws on his general attitude as a reformer. A young 
 man who was a descendant of Callicratidas, the Spartan 
 admiral at Arginusae, had an action brought against him 
 because he had adopted a sea-faring life for gain, and because 
 he took no part in public affairs. Apollonius succeeded in 
 convincing him that in this he was derogating both from his 
 ancestral traditions and from those of Sparta. He accordingly 
 gave up his mercantile pursuits, and at the intercession of 
 
 1 iv. 23 : fj.ovovob ireprffiaXev. 2 iv. 25. 
 
 iv. 30 (3) : Svcrxepdva^ ofo 6 'Airo\\wvios (rovrl 82 irpbs rovs
 
 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 23 
 
 Apollonius was acquitted by the ephors. Superficially this 
 may seem inconsistent with the discourse at Smyrna, but in 
 reality it is part of the same general ideal. In that ideal, 
 local diversity is included. Thus at Athens, as we shall 
 afterwards find, Apollonius will allow no disrespect towards the 
 sea-faring tradition ; whereas here he reminds the descendant 
 of Callicratidas that the Spartans lost their military power when 
 they took to the sea. 1 
 
 The humanitarian tendency which the reforming movement 
 combined with its regard for antique ideals becomes evident 
 when we are told expressly that Apollonius treated the slaves 
 of his companions as a part of his philosophic community. 2 
 Passing over some intermediate incidents, we may follow him 
 westward to Rome, where at this time Nero was persecuting 
 philosophy. 
 
 The philosophic cloak, says Philostratus, was proceeded 
 against in the law-courts as a disguise of diviners. Not to 
 mention other cases, Musonius, a man second only to Apol- 
 lonius, was imprisoned on account of his philosophy and 
 came near losing his life. Before Apollonius and his company 
 reach the gates, a certain Philolaus of Citium tries to deter 
 them from proceeding. To Apollonius this seems a divinely- 
 ordained test to separate the stronger disciples from the weaker 
 (whom, however, he does not blame) ; and, in fact, out of 
 thirty-four, only eight remain with him, the rest making 
 various excuses for their flight at once from Nero and from 
 philosophy. Of those who remained was the young man 
 whom he had rescued from the transformed serpent. 
 
 He stigmatises the reigning tyranny as one so grievous that 
 under it men are not permitted to be wise. 3 His discourses 
 being all public, no accusations were made against him for a 
 time. He did not seek out men of position, but welcomed 
 them if they came, and discoursed to them exactly as to the 
 common people. 4 At Corinth a Cynic philosopher named 
 Demetrius had attached himself to him as Antisthenes did to 
 
 1 iv. 32. Cf. v. 20. 
 
 2 iv. 34 (2) : Koivbv 5' e/caXei rovs ff craipovs ical TOVS T&V tratpur So6\ovr 
 o&di yap ^Ke^vovs irapfupa. 
 
 3 iv. 38. (2) : TvpavviSos .... KaQfcrrriKvias oijrta 
 Kxpou tlva.1. 
 
 4 iv. 41.
 
 24 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 
 
 Socrates. This man now came to Rome and brought sus- 
 picion on him of responsibility for the violent attacks he him- 
 self proceeded to make on Nero. A public protest against 
 luxury delivered on a feast-day in a gymnasium which the 
 Emperor was opening in person led to his expulsion from 
 Rome by Nero's minister Tigellinus, who henceforth kept a 
 close watch on Apollonius. His opportunity came at last 
 when there was an epidemic of colds and the temples were full 
 of people making supplication for the Emperor because he had 
 a sore throat and the " divine voice " was hoarse. Apollonius, 
 bursting with indignation though he was at the folly of the 
 multitude, did not chide anyone, but tried to calm a disciple 
 by telling him to " pardon the gods, if they delight in buffoons." 
 This saying being reported to Tigellinus, he had him arrested 
 under the Lex majestatis. On bringing him to trial, how- 
 ever, he found himself baffled, and in fear of his superhuman 
 powers, let him go. 1 
 
 An incident at Rome is recorded that was thought to be an 
 illustration of those powers. A maiden who was about to be 
 married had died or appeared to have died, and was being 
 carried to the grave amid the lamentations of all Rome ; for 
 she was of a consular family. Apollonius, meeting the funeral 
 procession, commanded them to set down the bier, and, saying 
 something inaudible, restored the maiden to life ; who then, like 
 Alcestis brought back by Hercules, returned to her father's 
 house. Whether he detected a spark of vitality that had 
 escaped the notice of the physicians, or renewed the life that 
 was extinct, Philostratus acknowledges to be beyond his own 
 judgment, as it was beyond the judgment of those who were 
 present. 2 
 
 The next voyage of Apollonius was to the region of the 
 Baetis in Spain. Philostratus here tells some anecdotes to 
 illustrate the greater or less civilisation of the surrounding 
 country. When a courier came to Gades to announce the 
 triple victory of Nero at Olympia, the people there understood 
 what was meant ; but those of the neighbouring cities, who 
 knew nothing about the Greek games, got the notion that the 
 Emperor had been victorious in war and had taken captive 
 certain "Olympians." 3 A tragic actor came to Hispalis. 
 
 1 iv. 44 (4) : "xupti," H<f>r] " or/SotfXer <rv yap Kpelrrtav ?} v-w 1 e'/ioO 
 2 iv. 45. s v. 8.
 
 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 25 
 
 Where the people retained less of the antique barbarism in 
 their manners, they were pleased with tragedy as a new thing ; 
 but here the mask, and the lofty elevation of the actor, and the 
 portentous robes, and the resonant voice, terrified them till 
 they fled as from a demon. 1 Apollonius was sought out by 
 the prefect of the province. The subject of their conversations 
 is unknown ; but Damis conjectures that they plotted against 
 Nero ; for, when the prefect took his leave, the last words of 
 Apollonius were, " Farewell, and remember Vindex." 
 Philostratus reminds the reader that it was Vindex who first 
 stirred up the peoples of the West against the Emperor when 
 he was making his progress through Achaia ; and mentions 
 that he addressed to his soldiers an oration such as one 
 inspired by the noblest philosophy might breathe forth against 
 a tyrant. 2 
 
 Apollonius and his companions proceed by way of Africa to 
 Sicily. Hearing of the flight of Nero and the death of Vindex, 
 Apollonius in an oracular utterance predicts the brevity of the 
 reigns of the next three emperors (Galba, Otho, and Vitellius). 
 Such predictions Apollonius made, his biographer insists, not 
 as an enchanter, but so moved by a divine impulsion as to 
 know what the fates had in store. Enchanters or magicians 
 (of rfyTej), whom," says Philostratus, " I regard as the most 
 wretched of men," proclaim that by juggling artifice and by 
 barbarian sacrifices they can change the purpose of the fates ; 
 and many of them, when judicially accused, have confessed 
 that this is the nature of their wisdom. Apollonius, on the other 
 hand, followed the decrees of the fates, and foretold what would 
 come to pass of necessity. So far was he from all juggling 
 that when he saw the automata in India he praised the 
 ingenuity of the contrivances but did not care to learn the 
 details of their mechanism. 3 
 
 At Catana, the story is told that Typho is bound there, and 
 that from him arises the fire of -rEtna. Apollonius takes this 
 occasion to lead his disciples to a more " physical ". view of 
 volcanic eruptions. He begins with a paradox on the fables of 
 ; that they are to be preferred to those of the poets, in 
 
 1 v. 9. 
 
 2 v. IO (2): \6yov. . . . ftv IK irdvv yevpaias <j>i\offo<(>ia.s firl Ti>pa.vvoi> 9,i> rts
 
 26 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 
 
 respect of wisdom, precisely because they are not told with 
 such colouring as to give the impression that they are literally 
 true. The didactic purpose in them is thus made obvious; 
 whereas the poets leave it to the intelligence of their readers to 
 discover the truth. He himself relates a story about ^Esop 
 and Hermes, told to him as a child by his mother ; the point 
 of the story being that the god had suggested to ^sop a line 
 of invention that was at least his own, if it was humble. As 
 for the myth about the contention of giants with gods for the 
 possession of heaven, this is madness to say or to think. l 
 The cause of these outbursts of flame from volcanoes is in 
 reality a mixture of bitumen and sulphur blown upon by 
 subterranean winds in the crevices of the earth. 
 
 Revisiting Athens, Apollonius is initiated into the mysteries, 
 as he had foreseen. The winter he spends in visiting the 
 Greek temples. He projects a voyage to Egypt in the spring, 
 and, going down to the Piraeus, finds a ship. The owner 
 refuses to let him go on board, because, as he is conveying a 
 cargo of images of the gods, he is afraid to admit sea-faring 
 company, which is usually bad. Apollonius reminds him 
 since he appears to be an Athenian that the gods themselves 
 when they went on board the ships and took part with Athens 
 against the barbarians, had no fear of contamination from 
 disorderly sailors. He also censures the traffic in images. 2 
 
 At Rhodes he tells a newly-rich and uneducated youth who 
 is building a fine house and collecting paintings and statues 
 for it that he does not seem to possess the house, but the 
 house to possess him. 3 Coming to Alexandria, he is treated 
 with great reverence. Here an example was seen of his 
 marvellous powers. Twelve men condemned for robbery were 
 being led to execution. He perceived that one of them was 
 innocent, and told the executioners to place this man last; 
 meanwhile prolonging his speech so as to gain time, contrary 
 to his custom of brief utterance. When eight had been 
 decapitated, a horseman rode up with a reprieve for the 
 prisoner on whose behalf Apollonius had interceded; his 
 innocence having since been established. 4 
 
 We are told of a dispute in the temple with an Egyptian 
 priest regarding animal sacrifices, and of a discourse reproving 
 the Alexandrians for the sanguinary quarrels that arose from 
 their devotion to the contests of the hippodrome. At this 
 
 1 v. 16. 2 v. 20. 3 Y. 22 (2). 4 v. 24.
 
 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 27 
 
 point of the narrative, Vespasian arrives in Alexandria from 
 Judaea, aiming now at the Empire. The philosophers Dion 
 and Euphrates bid the people rejoice. For, says Philostratus, 
 the last fifty years had been a period of tyrannies so harsh that 
 even the reign of Claudius, though he was better than the 
 emperors before and after, had seemed to give no respite. x 
 Apollonius was equally glad, but did not care lo obtrude 
 himself. Vespasian, however, sought him out, and first set forth 
 to him alone his reasons for seeking the empire ; though he 
 had commended to him his fellow-philosophers also as advisers. 
 Apollonius heartily approves of his purpose; and, to his 
 astonishment, tells him that he is destined to rebuild the 
 temple of Jupiter Capitolinus at Rome. He did not yet know 
 that the temple had been burned down ; but it was afterwards 
 found that this was the case, and that the conflagration had 
 been manifested to Apollonius sooner than if it had taken place 
 in Egypt. 2 
 
 The day after the private interview with Apollonius, the 
 other philosophers are called in. Vespasian formally explains 
 the motives of his action ; describing the tyranny to which the 
 Roman world has been subject from the' reign of Tiberius, and 
 pointing out that if Vitellius is allowed to rule, Nero will have 
 come to life again. " You have learned how not to govern," 
 said Apollonius, " from those who governed badly : let us now 
 consider how a good ruler ought to act." 3 Euphrates, 
 however, who has become jealous of the special attention paid 
 to Apollonius, makes a long speech in Stoic phraseology: 
 first remarking that it is premature to consider how one is to 
 proceed in a certain course of action before it has been 
 decided whether that is the right course. In the end he 
 approves of the resolution of Vespasian to march against 
 Vitellius, but advises that, if he is victorious, he should 
 restore to the Romans the democratic form of government 
 under which they were most prosperous, and gain for himself 
 the glory of having begun an era of freedom. Dion partly 
 
 l v. 27. Tacitus also dated the beginning of improvement from the reign 
 of Vespasian, to whose personal example he ascribes some influence in the 
 return from excessive luxury to a simpler mode of living : " Nisi forte 
 rebus cunctis inest quidam velut orbis, ut quern ad modum temporum vices, 
 ita morum vertantur ; nee omnia apud priores meliora, sed nostra quoque 
 aetas multa laudis et artium imitanda posteris tulit." (Ann, iii. 55.) 
 
 2 T. 30. 3 v. 32(3).
 
 2 8 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 
 
 agrees and partly disagrees with the advice of Euphrates. He 
 agrees in particular that Vespasian would have done better to 
 let the Jews separate if they chose ; political separation being 
 appropriate to the singularity of their manners. Instead of 
 spending his force in bringing them to subjection, and thus 
 doing all that was in his power to preserve the empire for 
 Nero, he ought to have straightway attacked him. At the 
 same time he approves of the enterprise against Vitellius. A 
 democracy, if inferior to an aristocracy (of Platonic type), is to 
 be preferred to tyrannies and oligarchies : but he fears lest the 
 Roman people, tamed as they now are by a series of tyrannies, 
 should find the transition to liberty as unbearable as that from 
 darkness to sudden light. Let Vespasian, however, put the 
 question to the vote, and if the people choose democracy, 
 grant it. In that case he will win fame universal and 
 unparalleled. If, on the other hand, they choose monarchy, 
 who should be Emperor but himself? Apollonius demon- 
 strates at length the impracticability of all this. To him 
 personally the form of political government is indifferent, since 
 he lives under the gods; but he does not think that the 
 human flock ought to be left to perish for want of a just and 
 prudent pastor. As one man pre-eminent in virtue, when he 
 becomes ruler in a democracy, makes that polity seem 
 identical with the form of government in which the one best 
 man rules ; so the government ot one, when it keeps steadily 
 in view the good of the commonwealth, is in effect a 
 democracy. 1 At Vespasian's request Apollonius, premising 
 that the art of government is not a thing that can be taught, 
 goes on to lay down some general maxims for the exercise of 
 kingly power. The king is himself to be ruled by the law. 
 Vespasian personally is advised not to let his sons take for 
 granted that the empire will fall to them as his heirs, but to 
 teach them to regard it as the prize of virtue. He is not to 
 go too fast in repressing the pleasures to which the people 
 have become accustomed ; they must be brought to temper- 
 ance by degrees. Governors of provinces should know the 
 language of the provinces they are sent to govern. The 
 disadvantage of not observing this rule he illustrates from the 
 failure in the administration of justice when he was in the 
 Peloponnese ; the Roman governor, who did not know Greek, 
 being at the mercy of those who had an interest in deceiving 
 
 J v. 35(4)-
 
 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 29 
 
 him. Euphrates allows that further discussion would be idle, 
 since the course to be taken has already been resolved on; 
 but, with an allusion glancing at Apollonius, gives the future 
 emperor the parting advice to embrace the philosophy that is 
 according to nature, and to have nothing to do with that 
 which professes itself inspired by the gods, liable as such 
 claims are to be the source of deception. 1 Vespasian 
 perceives his animus : and, when Euphrates afterwards hands 
 him an epistle full of requests of presents for himself and his 
 friends, he reads it aloud ; thus giving Apollonius the oppor- 
 tunity of retorting on Euphrates by contrasting his readiness 
 to ask for gifts from the emperor with his counsel to establish 
 a democracy. 
 
 This, Philostratus tells us, is what he has been able to 
 learn about the origin of the difference between the two 
 philosophers. With Dion, Apollonius was always on good 
 terms, though he thought Dion's philosophy too rhetorical. 
 Euphrates, according to the story, was afterwards in favour 
 under Domitian. When Vespasian as emperor revoked the 
 liberty granted by Nero to Greece, Apollonius did not care to 
 see him again ; though he approved of his good administration 
 generally. In connexion with the story of the philosopher at 
 Alexandria, a strange tale is recounted of his detecting the 
 soul of King Amasis in a tame lion. 2 He left Alexandria on 
 a journey to ^Ethiopia, accompanied by ten disciples out of 
 the number that had again gathered round him since the 
 dispersal under the persecution of Nero. 3 
 
 On the borderland between Egypt and Ethiopia a primitive 
 system of barter was practised. This Apollonius praised for 
 its moral superiority over the habits of commercial bargaining 
 among the Greeks.* An Egyptian youth named Timasio, who 
 had overcome a temptation similar to that of Hippolytus, 
 guided the company to the celebrated statue of Memnon. 
 Apollonius praises him for his continence, and regards him as 
 of more merit than Hippolytus because, while living chastely, 
 he nevertheless does not speak or think of the divinity of 
 Aphrodite otherwise than with respect. 5 He and his com- 
 
 1 v. 37 ( I ) ; <fx.\offo<f>iav 8t, w /3euri\ei/, rovrl yap \oiirbv Trpocretpijo-eTCU, rrjr 
 (j.fv Kara tj>6<rii> 'eTraivov Kal dffirdfov, TTJV 8 6eoK\VTetv <f>dffKOVffav vapairov ' 
 Kara\fffv86fjLfvoi yap rov Oeiov iro\\a Kal av^ra. ^,uas iraipov<riv. 
 
 v. 41. 3 Cf. iv. 37. 4 vi. 2. 5 vi. 4.
 
 30 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 
 
 panions, still guided by Timasio, arrive among the Gymno- 
 sophists, whom they have set out to visit. In consequence of 
 a trick of Euphrates, who has sent his disciple, Thrasybulus of 
 Naucratis, to prepossess them against Apollonius, they put off 
 receiving him for some time. At length, after negotiations 
 through Damis, who detects the trick, they consent to receive 
 him, though still resenting his reported preference of the 
 Indian wisdom to their own. 
 
 The eldest and chief of them, who is called Thespesio, 
 delivers a long address, in which he seeks to place the aims of 
 himself and his associates above those of the Indians ; advising 
 Apollonius to have no care about automata or wonder-working, 
 but to choose rather the wisdom that goes with toil and 
 simplicity of life. In his peroration, he reminds him of the 
 pictures he must have seen of the Hercules of Prodicus. As 
 in the Choice of Hercules Vice stands on one side luxuriously 
 adorned, and Virtue poorly clad on the other, so let Ap- 
 ollonius think of himself as placed between the alluring wisdom 
 of the Indians and the rugged discipline of the Egyptian 
 Gymnosophists. Apollonius explains that he has not come 
 thus late to make his choice between two philosophies. 
 Surrounded as he was in his youth by the teaching of all the 
 schools, he of his own accord adopted the Pythagorean 
 discipline, in spite of the austerity which from the first it did 
 not conceal 1 . Among the rewards it promises to its votaries 
 is to appear more pleasing to the gods though sacrificing little 
 than do those who pour forth to them the blood of bulls. 
 The doctrine of Plato regarding the soul, divinely taught by 
 him at Athens, Apollonius perceived not to have won general 
 acceptance among the Athenians. He therefore sought out a 
 city or nation in which one person should not say one thing 
 and another the opposite, but the same doctrine should be 
 confessed by all. First, accordingly, he looked to the 
 Egyptians ; but his teacher told him that the original fathers of 
 this wisdom were the Indians. For the rest, he addresses to 
 the Gymnosophists an apology on behalf of the arts and graces 
 of life and the adornment of temples ; pointing out that Apollo 
 does not disdain to clothe his oracles in verse, and that self- 
 
 1 Special stress is laid on the virtue of chastity. The Pythagorean 
 philosophy is represented as addressing the neophyte : K&V d<j>podi<riuv 
 TtTTTjOtrTas atff0ufj.au, fiapadpa, i<ni poi, Ka.6' &v <ro0( 
 O.VTOVS teal ci0. See vi. II (5).
 
 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 31 
 
 moving tripods are introduced by Homer at the banquets of 
 the gods. Nor has any accusation yet been laid in heaven 
 against Hephaestus for corrupting matter by his art. Every 
 art will have a care for ornament ; because the very being of 
 arts was invented for the sake of ornament. 1 
 
 The speech of Apollonius made a powerful impression on 
 all, and especially on Nilus, the youngest of the Egyytians. 
 Thespesio, though black, might be seen to blush. This, of 
 course, is a reminiscence of Thrasymachus in the Republic, 
 as it is likewise when we are told that he becomes reconciled 
 with Apollonius. Requested by Nilus and Thespesio, Apol- 
 lonius recounts his adventures. He and his companions are 
 courteously entertained by Nilus at a repast. Nilus desires to 
 become his companion ; and, to show that this is no rash 
 impulse on his part, relates his history. His father had sailed 
 to the Indian coast, and had told him what he had heard 
 about the sages in India. Informed by him also that the 
 Gymnosophists were a colony from thence, he gave up his 
 patrimony and joined them. He found them wise indeed, but 
 not like the Indians ; and had he not met with Apollonius, he 
 would himself have sailed to India like his father. The eager 
 and ingenuous Nilus also proposes that he shall try to 
 persuade his elders of the inferiority of their wisdom : but this 
 Apollonius discountenances ; receiving him on condition that 
 he will not make an attempt which would be of no avail. 
 
 Apollonius pays a visit to Thespesio, and asks him to 
 instruct him in the Egyptian wisdom, so that he may 
 communicate it to others, as he has communicated that which 
 he received from the Indians. Thespesio signifies his readi- 
 ness to answer questions. Apollonius begins by asking why 
 the Egyptians represent the gods for the most part so absurdly ; 
 their sacred images being apparently made in honour of 
 irrational animals rather than of divine beings. Thespesio 
 parries this attack on zoomorphism by a similar question about 
 the anthropomorphism of the Greeks. Did your Phidias and 
 your Praxiteles ascend into heaven and copy the forms of the 
 gods? And if it was not imitation that produced their art, 
 what then could it be ? An artist of more wisdom, answers 
 Apollonius, namely, Imagination. 2 He who conceives the 
 
 *vi. II (17) ; K&fffJiov yap ^Tri/xeX^rerat rixvij iraffa., Sri Kai avrb TO elvat 
 ^vas i'lrtp K0<r/j.ov fvprjTai. 
 
 2 vi. 19 (3) : (pavraffla TCLVT' et'^yeUraro,
 
 32 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 
 
 form of Zeus must see him in his mind's eye accompanied by 
 the heaven and the seasons and the stars : the fashioner of a 
 statue of Athena must think of armies, and of wisdom in 
 counsel, and of the arts, and of how she sprang from the head 
 of Zeus. Thespesio, on his part, contends that the Egyptians 
 display more reverence to the gods in not audaciously trying 
 to realise some conception of their forms, but using only 
 symbol and suggestion. Apollonius replies that there is 
 nothing to call forth reverence in the image of a dog or an ibis 
 or a goat. If, as Thespesio says, that is regarded with more 
 reverence which is only suggested to the mind, then the 
 Egyptians should have had temples and rites indeed, but no 
 images at all ; leaving the mental representation entirely to the 
 worshipper. "But you," he says in concluding, " have taken 
 away from the gods both visible beauty and the beauty of 
 suggestion." 1 "There was a certain Athenian named 
 Socrates," is the retort of Thespesio, "an old man of no 
 intelligence like ourselves, who used to swear by the dog and 
 by the goose and by the plane-tree." " Not that he thought 
 them gods," returns Apollonius, "but so that he might not 
 swear by the gods." 
 
 Thespesio, as if changing the subject, inquires about the 
 scourging of boys at Sparta. Do the Greeks endure such a 
 custom? And did Apollonius not reform it when he was 
 occupying himself with the affairs of the Lacedaemonians? 
 Apollonius replies that it would have been madness to contend 
 against a religious custom such as this. The scourging is per- 
 formed in accordance with an oracle directing that the altars 
 shall be sprinkled with an offering of human blood to the 
 Scythian Artemis. This no doubt was originally a require- 
 ment of human sacrifice; but the Spartans, by subtly 
 interpreting it, have at once evaded the obligation of putting a 
 human victim to death and turned a rite which they could not 
 get rid of into an exercise in fortitude. Thespesio, however, 
 skillfully presses the point; ending with the remark that he 
 has been speaking not against the Lacedaemonians but against 
 Apollonius. If we thus rigorously investigate customary rites 
 the origin of which reaches back to a grey antiquity beyond 
 knowledge, and cross-examine divinities as to their reasons for 
 delighting in them, not the Eleusinian nor the Samothracian 
 
 1 vi. 19 (5) : vp-el* 5' d<pripij<J-9e TOIS 0covt Kal rt> opaffffat KO\W Kal TO 
 VTrovoetffOa.1.
 
 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 33 
 
 nor any other mysteries will be safe. We can always ask 
 " Why this and not that ? " and take offence at one thing or 
 another. In these matters at any rate, if not in all, the 
 Pythagorean silence is good. Apollonius accordingly, re- 
 linquishing further argument on behalf of the Spartans, 
 consents to go on to another topic, and proposes that they 
 shall discuss the nature of justice. 1 
 
 Such a subject of discourse, Thespesio agrees, is suitable 
 both for professional philosophers and for others. Apollonius 
 then recalls the comment of the Indian sages on his notion 
 that when, being in a former body, he had refused to betray 
 his ship to pirates, he had performed an act of justice. They 
 laughed at this use of the word, holding that justice involves 
 something more than the absence of injustice. Rightly, 
 answers Thespesio, for no virtue consists in a mere negation. 
 And we must not expect to find men publicly rewarded for 
 practising justice. In the cases of Socrates and of Aristides 
 we rather find the opposite. No doubt it will seem absurd : 
 but as a matter of fact Justice, being appointed by Zeus and 
 the Destinies to prevent men from injuring one another, takes 
 no measures to prevent herself from being injured. Imagine, 
 however, that when Aristides returned from his apportionment 
 of tribute among the allies of Athens, the proposal had been 
 made by two orators to confer the crown upon him for his 
 justice ; and that one had assigned as the reason his returning 
 no richer than he went, and the other his observance of due 
 proportion to the capacity of each allied State, and his 
 refraining from all excessive demands : would not Aristides 
 himself have protested against the first orator for the inadequacy 
 of his reason, and recognised that the second was aiming at 
 the true mark ? And indeed, in maintaining due proportion, 
 he had regard to the advantage both of Athens and of the 
 islands ; as was seen afterwards when the Athenians, by im- 
 posing heavier burdens, brought about the revolt of their 
 tributaries and the loss of their empire. He, then, is just who 
 both acts justly himself and so orders things that others shall 
 not act unjustly. And from this diffusive virtue which is 
 better than oaths taken on sacrifices 2 will spring both other 
 
 1 vi. 20. 
 
 2 vi. 21 (7): SiK&fffi. /jv yap rotcffSe iroXXffi SiKai6rfpov -rj oi KO.T&. rCiv 
 
 TO/J.IUV 6fJ.v6vTfS. 
 
 3
 
 34 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 
 
 virtues and in particular those of the judge and of the 
 legislator, which come peculiarly within the province of 
 justice. 1 
 
 To this account of the just man Apollonius assents. After 
 some further discourse, he informs Thespesio of his intention 
 to go in quest of the sources of the Nile. In the account of 
 so remote a journey the geography and zoology as usual 
 become mixed with the marvellous, though they are not wholly 
 fictitious. We are told of the Androphagi and the Pygmies, 
 who are of Ethiopian race, and extend as far as to the 
 ^Ethiopic Sea, into which no one voluntarily sails. We also 
 hear of cataracts haunted by daemons ; and there is a curious 
 story about the taming of a satyr in one of the villages by 
 Apollonius. 
 
 On his return, he signified his approval of the conduct of 
 Titus after he had taken Jeruselem, in refusing to accept a 
 crown from neighbouring nations. 2 Titus, now associated 
 with his father in the government, invited him to Argos, and 
 consulted him as to his future behaviour as a ruler. Apollonius 
 says that he will send him his companion Demetrius the Cynic 
 as a free-spoken counsellor; and Titus, though the name of 
 the Cynic is at first disagreeable to him, assents with a good 
 grace. 3 He is also said to have consulted Apollonius in 
 private on his destiny. 
 
 Apollonius, says Philostratus at this point, made many more 
 journeys, but only to countries he already knew. He remained 
 always like himself; and this is for the sage even more difficult 
 than to know himself. Before proceeding to the account of 
 his acts and sufferings under Domitian, the biographer brings 
 together a few miscellaneous anecdotes. One of these throws 
 interesting light on popular beliefs in the eastern provinces of 
 the Roman Empire. The cities on the left of the Hellespont, 
 it is recorded, 4 being once troubled with earthquakes, certain 
 Egyptians and Chaldaeans were collecting money for a sacrifice, 
 estimated at the price of ten talents, to Earth and Poseidon, 
 
 1 It is noteworthy that the place here assigned to justice as a positive 
 virtue coincides with that which it occupies in Dante's description of the 
 spirts in the heaven of Jupiter, who are those of men that bore rule on 
 earth. 
 
 2 vi. 29 : HT) yap ai/rds ralV flpyd.<r6ai, Oetf 5' 6pyi]i> ^'/jpavn ^iriSfduKcvcu 
 rdt tavrov xpcn. 
 
 * vi. 31. 4 vi. 41.
 
 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 35 
 
 and declared that they would not perform the sacrifice till the 
 money was paid down. Apollonius drove them away for their 
 greed, and by due rites quieted the earth. 
 
 Since those who adopt the philosophic life are best proved 
 by their attitude to tyrannies, the behaviour of Apollonius in 
 face of Domitian has now to be compared with that of elder 
 philosophers when confronted with tyrannies in their time. 
 Philostratus proceeds to make the comparison in set form ; 
 maintaining the thesis that Apollonius showed his superiority 
 to all others, high-minded as they had undoubtedly proved 
 themselves. It is not his purpose to depreciate the rest, but 
 it is his duty to show the greatness of his hero. 1 
 
 Some of the sayings of Apollonius against the Emperor 
 having been recorded, we are told that he fell under suspicion 
 through his correspondence with Nerva and his associates 
 Orfitus and Rufus. When proceedings against them were 
 begun, he addressed to the statue of Domitian the words : 
 " Fool, how little you know of the Fates and Necessity ! He 
 who is destined to reign after you, should you kill him, will 
 come to life again." 2 This was brought to Domitian's ears by 
 means of Euphrates. Foreknowing that the Emperor had 
 decided on his arrest, Apollonius anticipated the summons by 
 setting out with Damis for Italy. They arrive at Puteoli, and 
 there fall in with Demetrius, who leads them to the seat of " the 
 ancient Cicero," where they can converse privately. Demetrius 
 tells Apollonius that he is to be accused of sacrificing a boy to 
 get divinations for the conspirators ; and that further charges 
 against him are his dress and his manner of life and the 
 worship that is said to be paid to him by certain people. He 
 then tries to dissuade him from staying to brave the anger of a 
 tyrant who will be unmoved by the most just defence, and who 
 is undistracted by that devotion to the Muses which, when 
 Nero was singing and playing on the lyre, gave the world some 
 relief. Damis, who till now has been unaware of the purpose 
 of his master in coming, seconds the argument of Demetrius. 
 Apollonius holds this timorous counsel excusable on the part 
 of Damis, who is an Assyrian and has lived in the neighbour- 
 hood of the Medes, where tyrannies are adored ; but as for 
 Demetrius, he does not know how he will make his apology to 
 philosophy. He himself intends to remain ; and in justification 
 
 vii. i, 2. 2 vii. 9 (i).
 
 36 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 
 
 he sets forth the arguments that this is the only course worthy 
 of his character. Of despotisms he allows that that is the 
 most dangerous kind which, like the tyranny of Domitian, pro- 
 ceeds under forms of law. All the more, however, is he bound 
 to appear and answer the charge against him : to flee from a 
 legal trial would have the appearance of self-condemnation. 
 And whither shall he flee ? It must be beyond the limits of 
 the Roman Empire. Shall he then seek refuge with men who 
 know him already ; to whom he will have to acknowledge that 
 he has left his friends to be destroyed by an accusation which 
 he has not dared to face himself? Perhaps Demetrius will tell 
 him to go among those who do not know him. But here too, 
 as he makes impressively clear, starting from the use of the 
 word by Euripides in the Orestes, the power called conscience 
 (o-iWo-is) will follow him, and will allow him no peace whether 
 awake or asleep. 1 At the end of this address, Damis recovers 
 courage, and Demetrius, far from continuing his opposition, 
 cannot sufficiently express his admiration of Apollonius. 
 
 The pvafectus pYcetorw at that time, the narrative continues, 
 was ^Elianus, who had been acquainted with Apollonius in 
 Egypt. As a diversion in his favour before he arrives, he 
 argues to the Emperor that the "chattering sophists," having 
 nothing to enjoy in life, deliberately try to draw death upon 
 themselves at the hands of those who bear the sword. Per- 
 ceiving this, Nero could not be brought by Demetrius to give 
 him the death he desired, but let him go, not as pardoning 
 him but out of contempt. 2 On the arrival of Apollonius as a 
 prisoner, ^Elian uses his authority to submit him to examina- 
 tion in secret. When they are alone, he gives expression to 
 his friendly feeling, but explains the necessity of proceeding 
 with caution. Apollonius asks him what he is accused of. 
 ^Eiian repeats the heads of accusation already mentioned ; in- 
 forming him that the most serious charge is precisely that which 
 he himself knows must be false, but which the Emperor is 
 most disposed to believe true : namely, that Apollonius slew 
 
 J vii. 14 (8-10). This passage is of high interest philosophically, as 
 
 showing how fully the ethical conception of conscience had already been 
 
 brought into view. The psychological conception of consciousness (some- 
 times expressed by the same word) was not so completely formulated till 
 
 the Neo-Platonic period, with its more definite direction to abstract 
 thought. 
 
 2 vii. 16.
 
 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 37 
 
 an Arcadian boy for sacrifice to encourage Nerva in aspiring 
 to the empire ; the offering being made at night by the waning 
 moon. 1 In answering the charge, however, let Apollonius 
 avoid a contemptuous attitude. The interview being at a end, 
 ^lian calls in the guards, and, with simulated anger, con- 
 signs him to custody among those who are awaiting their 
 trial. 
 
 In prison, he is derided by a military tribune, who tells him 
 that he knows what he is accused of if Apollonius does not. 
 He is accused of being worshipped by men and thinking him- 
 self worthy of equal honours with the gods. 2 As a test, let 
 them go outside the walls, and he will try to cut off the head 
 of Apollonius with his sword. If he succeeds, Apollonius is 
 innocent of the claim to divinity. If he is terror-stricken and 
 the sword falls from his hand, that is a proof at once of the 
 divinity of Apollonius and of his guilt. 
 
 Here the histories are given of some of the other prisoners, 
 who are deploring their fate. The philosopher, in accordance 
 with his professional character, calls them together and 
 addresses to them a consolatory discourse which gives them 
 fortitude and hope. Telling them first not to despair before 
 their cases are decided, he proceeds in a more elevated strain. 
 During the whole of our life, the body is the prison of the soul ; 
 and those who dwell in palaces are more under this bondage 
 than those whom they put in bonds. Nor is a savage mode 
 of life a protection. The Scythian tribes are no freer than we 
 are ; but are surrounded with hardships by rivers impassable 
 save when frozen over by the cold of winter, and shrink even 
 within the shelter of their wagon-huts. And, if it is not 
 puerile to recur to the fables of the poets, 3 one might tell of 
 gods who are said to have been bound in chains, both in 
 heaven and on earth. Think finally of the many wise and 
 blessed men who have suffered at the hands both of licentious 
 peoples and tyrannies, and resolve not to be surpassed by them 
 in courage. 
 
 The next day, an emissary of Domitian comes in the guise 
 of a much-dejected prisoner, but Apollonius sees his purpose 
 
 2 vii. 21 (l): rb yap TrpoffKWf'iffda.i fff virb TUV dvOpuTrwv 
 tfftav aiovfj.evov TO?S foots. 
 
 3 vii. 26 (5) : et 3 ^r\ /jifipaKiwdris 6 \6yos.
 
 38 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 
 
 of entrapping him, and discourses to his fellow-prisoners only 
 of his travels. On the evening of the fifth day, one from 
 -^Elian brings him the message that he is to be led before the 
 Emperor on the morrow ; renewing the advice not to be con- 
 temptuous, and describing Domitian's appearance and manner 
 of speaking. The fact that Apollonius had come forward to 
 undergo danger on behalf of others, Philostratus here remarks, 
 made a favourable impression even on those who before were 
 prejudiced against him. While he is being led under guard to 
 the Emperor's presence, he rallies his Assyrian disciple on the 
 mortal terror he is in. Damis who ingenuously confesses how 
 terrified he is is not admitted ; and Domitian insists that the 
 philosopher shall defend himself alone from the charges, and 
 not Nerva, Rufus, and Orfitus, who are already condemned. 
 Apollonius, nevertheless, declares them innocent, and protests 
 against the injustice of assuming their guilt before their trial. 
 Domitian, now telling him that as regards his defence he may 
 take what course he likes, has his beard and his hair shorn, 
 and puts him in fetters such as are reserved for the worst 
 criminals. A letter attributed to Apollonius in which he 
 supplicatingly entreats the Emperor to release him from his 
 bonds, Philostratus pronounces to be spurious. 1 
 
 When Apollonius has been lodged in his new dungeon for 
 two days, a Syracusan who is " the eye and tongue of 
 Domitian," visits him under the pretence that he is a well- 
 wisher and has gained access to him by payment. After much 
 feigned commiseration he reveals his drift; hinting that 
 Apollonius can easily obtain his release by giving information 
 about the supposed conspiracy against the Emperor. The 
 Syracusan having gone away without result, Apollonius tells Damis 
 that he was once that Pytho of Byzantium who came from 
 Philip on a mission to the Greeks, and whom Demosthenes 
 withstood at Athens. He also predicts that they will suffer 
 nothing more than they have suffered already ; and, to show 
 that his submitting to bondage is voluntary, frees his leg from 
 the fetter and then replaces it. 2 
 
 These things, says Philostratus, the more foolish sort ascribe 
 to magic ; against the efficacy of which he again takes up the 
 argument. Successful events attributed to charms or sacrifices 
 
 1 vii. 35. This letter is not among the extant epistles. 
 8 vii. 38.
 
 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 39 
 
 may be more rationally explained by chance coincidence. 
 Nothing, however, will persuade those who have recourse to 
 such arts that success does not result from performance of the 
 prescribed rites, while failure is to be attributed to the omis- 
 sion of some detail the importance of which was overlooked. 
 Others, he adds, have ridiculed the art at large; but if the 
 young will follow his advice, they will have nothing to do with 
 things of the kind, even in sport. 1 As is evident, he would 
 willingly have ascribed the superhuman powers he conceived 
 Apollonius to have possessed to some deeper knowledge of 
 natural causation. Imperfect as the science of the time was, 
 and credulous as opinion was becoming, philosophic culture 
 repudiated in theory the anti-natural conception of miracle. 
 
 Apollonius is at last set free from his bonds, and conducted 
 back to his former prison. His fellow-prisoners welcome him 
 on his return, and he devotes himself unceasingly to giving 
 them counsel. Damis he now sends to Dicaearchia (Puteoli) 
 to expect with Demetrius his appearance after he has made 
 his defence. 
 
 When the philosopher is brought to the imperial judgment- 
 seat to be tried, Domitian is to be figured as vexed with the 
 laws because they invented courts of justice. 2 The court was 
 decked out as for a festival oration, and all the illustrious were 
 present. Apollonius, on entering, so disregarded the monarch 
 as not even to glance at him. The accuser therefore crying 
 out to him to " look towards the god of all men," he raised 
 his eyes to the ceiling: thus indicating, says the bio- 
 grapher, that he was looking to Zeus ; and thinking him who 
 was impiously flattered worse than the flatterer. 3 
 
 He had prepared an oration in case this should be 
 necessary ; but Domitian merely put to him four brief inter- 
 rogatories. Those he triumphantly answers, and the Emperor 
 acquits him amid applause ; telling him, however, to remain so 
 that he may converse with him in private. Apollonius thanks 
 him ; but adds a stern reproof. " Through the wretches who 
 
 1 vii. 39 (3) : 4fjLol 5' diroTre^ivtfw /X7j5' ticeivois 6/uXeiv T0i>t vtovs, Iva. 
 -rai^iv TO. roiavr' fOifavro. 
 
 2 viii. I : dvanirovcrOai Si xp*l lov &-)(66ft.evov roit v6fiois, ttreitiT) tvpov 
 SiKaffrr/pia. 
 
 3 viii. 4 : tv5iKvv/j.fvos ptv ri> ts rbv Am opav, rbv 8' d<re/3wj KO\a.Kcv6tvTa, 
 
 rov KO\a.Kfvffa.vTos ri
 
 40 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 
 
 surround you," he exclaims, " cities are destroyed, the islands 
 are filled with exiles, the continent with groans, the armies 
 with cowardice, and the senate with suspicion." Then he 
 suddenly disappears from among them. 1 
 
 Since Apollonius composed a speech which he was not 
 allowed to deliver, Philostratus thinks that this too ought to be 
 set before the reader. What he gives is an elaborate defence 
 in which the philosopher repudiates all magical arts and all 
 claims to divinity, except so far as good men may be said to 
 participate in the divine. His life, pure from blood-sacrifice 
 and other pollutions, brings him nearer to the gods, and the 
 lightness of his diet enables him to form presages and hence 
 to be of service to men. In turning men's souls from their 
 vices he is of use to their rulers also, who find them more 
 governable. This being so, if the people did think him a god, 
 the deception would be a gain to the master of the flock. 2 
 They did not think him a god, however, but only held the 
 ancient opinion that by virtue men can participate in the 
 divinity. A man who has something of divine order in his 
 own soul can by wisdom draw away the souls of others from 
 over-vehement desires of pleasure or wealth. For such an one, 
 it is perhaps not impossible to withhold them from contact 
 with murders : " but to wash them clean," adds the Pythagorean, 
 "is possible neither for me nor for God the Maker of all." 3 
 He is made to refer to some of the wonders recorded in the 
 biography ; but he disclaims the possession of power to keep 
 a dying friend in life or to recover him from the dead. Had 
 it been in his power to do either, he would have done it. 4 
 In the part of his apology referring to the accusation of having 
 said that if the Fates have determined that a certain man 
 shall reign, then, though the Emperor kill him, he will come to 
 life again, Apollonius points out that such assertions are of 
 the hyperbolical kind adapted to produce conviction in those 
 who find things that are put consistently with the appearance 
 
 1 viii. 5 (6). 
 
 2 viii. 7 (21) : &<rr d Kal 6ebv yyovvrd ^e, aol ictpSos T; aTrdrr) elx e< f^" 
 n-poOv/j-ta ydp TTOV T)KpodvT6 fjiov, 5e5t(5res TrpdrTfif, a pr) 5o/cet 0e(jS. 
 
 3 viii. 7. (26) : <f>6vuv yap avaff^'iv ptv auras ^17 irpoffdwrfffOai OVK dSvvaroi^ 
 fows dvdpl roioi/Tff, airovtyai 5' otr t^ol dwarov oSre T$ TTO.VTWV 
 
 6etf. 
 
 4 viii. 7 (46).
 
 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 41 
 
 of reason incredible. 1 The implied view is obviously that of 
 the Stoic determinism. If the predetermined event is infallible, 
 its conditions are in reality equally necessitated. Uncon- 
 ditional fate is an abstraction ; though it is an impressive and 
 a moralising abstraction. In conclusion, he quotes the lines 
 of Sophocles in the CEdipus Coloneus on the revolutions of 
 human life 
 
 jj.6voL$ ou ylyverai 
 dfoiffi. yrjpas ovSe K0.rda.vetv irore, 
 TO. 5' $\\a (rvyxfi trdvd' 6 iray/cpar))? ~)^p6vo^. 
 
 Let the Emperor remember how ephemeral is good fortune, 
 and put an end to the oppressions through which he has been 
 made hateful to all, as all things have been made hateful to 
 him. 
 
 When Apollonius, as has been related, strangely disappeared, 2 
 the tyrant did not break out into a rage, as most expected, 
 but rather gave signs of trouble. This having taken place at 
 Rome before noon, Apollonius appeared in the afternoon of 
 the same day at Puteoli to Damis and Demetrius, as he had 
 promised. He came to them when they were beginning to 
 despair of ever seeing him again ; and convinced them by 
 having a tangible body that he had not returned from the 
 shades. After he has slept, he tells them that he is about to 
 sail for Greece. Demetrius is afraid that he will not he 
 sufficiently hidden there : to which he replies that, if all the 
 earth belongs to the tyrant, they that die in the open day have 
 a better part than they that live in concealment. 3 To those 
 in Greece who asked him how he had escaped, he merely said 
 that his defence had been successful. Hence when many 
 coming from Italy related what had really happened, he was 
 almost worshipped ; being regarded as divine especially because 
 he had in no way boasted of the marvellous mode of his escape. 
 
 Of this residence in Greece one singular adventure is re- 
 lated. Apollonius desired to visit the cave of Trophonius at 
 Lebadea in Boeotia. The priests refused to admit him ; 
 making excuses to him personally but alleging to the people as 
 their ground his being a sorcerer. He went, however, in the 
 
 1 viii. 7 (53) : raj yap uire/^oXas rCiv \6ywv tffay6fJL(0a Sia TOI)S rots irrfavoh 
 direidovvras. 
 
 - viii. 8 : daifj.6vi6v re KOI pg.Sioi> etVeZV rpovov. 
 3 viii. 14.
 
 42 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 
 
 evening with his companions and forced his way in. In this 
 he did what was so pleasing to the god that Trophonius 
 appeared to the priests and rebuked them. To the inquiry 
 of Apollonius, what philosophy he regarded as the best and 
 purest, he replied by allowing him to carry off a book contain- 
 ing the Pythagorean precepts. This book, says Philostratus, 
 is now at Antium ; and his own opinion is that it was brought 
 with some of the epistles of Apollonius to the Emperor 
 Hadrian, and left in the palace there. 1 
 
 A concourse of disciples from Ionia joined with those of 
 Hellas to surround the philosopher ; and rhetoric lay neglected 
 as an art that can teach only language. He kept his disciples 
 away from the forensic orators ( T ^ Ayopaiovs) having always 
 been hostile to them, and now, since he had seen the Roman 
 prisons, regarding them and their money-making art as more 
 responsible for the state of things there than the tyrant him- 
 self. 2 
 
 About this time a crown (<rre<t>ai>os} was seen around the sun 
 obscuring its rays. The portent was fulfilled when Stephanus 
 plotted the death of Domitian, then fresh from the murder of 
 Flavius Clemens. Stephanus, says Philostratus, being the 
 freedman of his wife who was, like Clemens himself, a re- 
 lation of Domitian, though not his sister, as Philostratus has it 
 avenged his death by attacking the tyrant with a spirit 
 equal to that of the most freeborn Athenians. He proceeds 
 to give an account of the tyrannicide, which, as we see, he 
 approves in entire consistency with classical ethics. While 
 this was taking place at Rome, Apollonius having returned 
 to Ionia after a stay of two years in Greece was speaking at 
 Ephesus. Interrupting his discourse, which had gradually 
 become troubled, he stepped forward three or four paces and 
 cried out, " Strike the tyrant, strike ! " Then he told his 
 audience that Domitian had been slain at that hour ; and this 
 vision of his from the gods was afterwards confirmed circum- 
 stantially. 3 
 
 1 vin. 19, 20. 
 
 2 viii. 22. Cf. Tac., Dial, afe Oratoribus, 12 : "nam lucrosae huius et 
 sanguinantis eloquentiae usus recens et malis moribus natus, atque, ut tu 
 dicebas, Aper, in locum teli repertus." 
 
 8 viii. 26.
 
 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 43 
 
 Near the end of Nerva's brief reign (96-98) he disappeared 
 from among men, in some way that is not precisely known ; 
 for he sent Dam is away when the expected time approached, 
 on the pretext of entrusting him with a confidential letter to 
 the Emperor. Damis does not even tell his age, which some 
 make to have been eighty, some over ninety, and others more 
 than a hundred. According to Philostratus, his statues in the 
 temple at Tyana showed him to have possessed in a pre-eminent 
 degree the charm which is sometimes found to accompany old 
 age. Several legends are related of the manner in which he 
 was called from earth. 1 He always taught the immortality of 
 the soul, but did not encourage the indulgence of curiosity 
 about its future. To a disputatious youth who, even after 
 his departure, continued to argue against immortality, he 
 appeared in a vision and delivered an oracle. If the verses 2 
 are by Apollonius, he would seem to have anticipated the 
 attitude of Kant at the conclusion of his Traume eines Geister- 
 sehers. Philostratus lastly tells us that he has found no tomb 
 or cenotaph of Apollonius anywhere, but that everywhere he 
 has met with marvellous stories. 
 
 The effect of the work of Philostratus on cultivated opinion 
 was decisive. Apollonius was henceforth recognised as at 
 least a philosopher and perhaps something more. Not that 
 the marvels related produced this effect. No school was led 
 by them to call itself after the name of Apollonius, and no one 
 appealed to his wonder-working as evidence of the truth of the 
 doctrines attributed to him. The feeling seems to have 
 been and, as we shall see, an adherent of the new religion 
 was not entirely exempt from it that here was undoubtedly a 
 genuine moral and religious teacher. When, hcwever, the 
 struggle between Christianity and the established polytheism 
 reached its critical point, it occurred to one advocate of the 
 old religion to select the Life of Apollonius as containing 
 wonders better authenticated than those appealed to by the 
 Christians. The argument of Hierocles, so far as it can be 
 gathered from Eusebius, was this : " You proclaim Jesus a god 
 on account of a few prodigies recorded by your evangelists. 
 We have writers of more education than yours and with more 
 care for truth, who relate similar wonders of Apollonius ; and 
 yet we, showing more solid judgment, do not make him a god 
 
 l viii. 30. 2 viii. 31 (3).
 
 44 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 
 
 on account of them, but only regard him as a man found 
 pleasing to the gods." This is practically all that Eusebius 
 tells us about the contents of the work written by Hierocles 
 under the title Philalethes. Everything else in the book, he 
 asserts, has been urged by others and has been already replied 
 to. The parallel between Apollonius and Christ is all that is 
 new, and this only will be taken up. What seems especially 
 to have stung the father of ecclesiastical history is the taunt of 
 Hierocles about the " heedlessness and lightness " (efytpeia. KO.I 
 Kov<j>6Ti)s) of Christian belief, to which he recurs again and again. 
 A brief analysis of his argument will not be uninstructive. 
 
 He will waive, he tells us, such points as this, that the 
 coming of Christ alone was foretold by the wise men of the 
 Hebrews under divine inspiration, and that to this day devils 
 are cast out by the power of his name, as the writer can testify 
 from experience. 1 Of the biographers referred to by Hierocles 
 namely, Maximus of -^Egae, Damis the Assyrian, and 
 Philostratus the Athenian it will be sufficient to consider the 
 last. From his trustworthiness, that of the rest may be judged. 
 Accordingly the method of Eusebius is to examine in succession 
 the eight books of Philostratus, pointing out in each the incon- 
 sistencies and incredibilities of the narrative. I have no 
 objection, he says, to placing Apollonius as high as any one 
 likes among philosophers. But when his biographer, be he 
 Damis the Assyrian, or Philostratus, or any one else, represents 
 him, under cover of Pythagoreanism, as going beyond the 
 bounds of philosophy, then he is really made out to be an ass 
 in a lion's skin, a juggling quack instead of a philosopher. 
 There are limits set to human powers which no man may 
 transgress ; though a higher being may condescend to the 
 conditions of human nature. 
 
 Was Apollonius then a divine being ? If so, let the bio- 
 grapher preserve consistency through the whole narrative. He 
 is said to have been announced to his mother before his birth 
 as an incarnation of the god Proteus, and swans are said to 
 have sung him into the world. Whence did the writer get this ? 
 It cannot have been from a disciple who joined him long after 
 in Nineveh. 2 In one place he is made to describe himself as 
 
 1 Adversus Hieroclem, 4 : eiWri xal vvv rrjs evOeov SvvdfjLfus TT)V aperr^v 
 ^TTiSeiKwrai fj-oxflripous TIVO.S KO.I <f>au\ovs 5ai/jLovas i/'uxa's avdpuiraiv Kal 
 <rJ}/j.afft.v <j){dpfvoi>Ta.s dTreActi'pwp Sia /j,6vi]S rr/s apprirov Trpocrriyopias avrov, 
 tbs avrrj ireipa KaTfi\ri(pafj.fv. 
 
 *7Md., 8. Cf. 12.
 
 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 45 
 
 knowing all languages without learning them. Yet he is said 
 to have acquired the Attic mode of speech by discipline and 
 attention, and not by nature, and to have been taken by his 
 father to a rhetorician at Tarsus. Many things related of him, 
 Eusebius allows, are credible as belonging to the history of a 
 wise and good man. It is the attempt to ascribe to him a 
 nature more than human that gives ground for blaming both 
 the author and the subject of the biography. 
 
 Passing from the first to the second book, Eusebius points 
 out inconsistencies in the account of the journey to India and 
 the meeting with King Phraotes. He then dwells on the 
 marvellous tales about India related in the third book. Be- 
 hold, he exclaims, the incredibilities in which " Philalethes " 
 glories ; preferring Philostratus to our divine evangelists not 
 only as a man of highest education but as careful about truth J 1 
 larchas, the chief teacher among the Brahmans, is represented 
 as sitting, in the manner of a satrap rather than of a philo- 
 sopher, on a more elevated and more adorned seat than his 
 fellows. This outward distinction by the marks of tyrannic 
 privilege was a fitting mode of doing honour to the teacher of 
 divine philosophy. 2 The account by Philostratus of the 
 vegetative growth like wool that enables the philosophers to 
 dispense with clothing made from materials furnished by 
 animals seems to require that we should think of them as 
 labouring at the loom, unless we are to suppose that 
 this substance of its own accord changes into their sacred 
 raiment. 3 That Apollonius praised the automatic mechanisms 
 of the sages is inconsistent with his not caring to know of them 
 in detail or to emulate them. 4 
 
 Not till the return of Apollonius from India does the biogra- 
 pher, in the fourth book, make him begin his wonderful works. 
 Yet, had he been of a diviner nature than that of man, one 
 would say that he ought to have begun them long before, 
 without need of communicating with the Arabians and the 
 Magi and the Indians. Eusebius then scornfully comments 
 on the account of his destroying the plague of Ephesus. The 
 story about the ghost of Achilles, he proceeds, is also full of 
 absurdities and inconsistencies. The ghost appears at dead of 
 night and disappears at cockcrow ; circumstances which would 
 be appropriate enough in the case of evil demons, but are out 
 
 1 Adversus Hierodem, 17. 2 Ibid., 18. 
 
 3 Ibid., 23. Ibid., 25.
 
 46 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 
 
 of place when related of the soul of a hero. The " heedless- 
 ness " of the writer in his accounts of the casting out of a 
 demon from a young man, and of the chasing away of the 
 lamia, does not need much elaboration of proof; for this, as 
 they say, is a casting out of demons by demons. 1 The raising 
 of a maiden from death to a second life is most incredible, 
 and to Philostratus himself seems a marvel to be explained 
 away. 2 Had such a wonder really been performed by Apol- 
 lonius at Rome, it would hardly have escaped the attention of 
 the Emperor and of all his subordinates, and especially of the 
 philosopher Euphrates who at that time was there, and who 
 would not have failed afterwards to include this among his 
 accusations of magic. 
 
 In his interviews with Vespasian, this steersman of an 
 Egyptian ship for such Apollonius told the Indian sage that 
 he had been in a former life gives himself the airs of a god 
 and of a kingmaker. He commends Euphrates to Vespasian ; 
 and afterwards, when he is at variance with him, speaks of 
 him to Domitian as the worst of men. How does Philostratus 
 reconcile this with the prescience he attributes to his hero ? 
 Evidently, if the wonders related by the writer actually took 
 place, Apollonius performed them by the aid of a demon. 
 Had the superhuman insight he displays on some occasions been 
 of a divine character, he would have displayed it always, and 
 would never have needed to inquire about anything. The fact 
 that he foreknows some things and not others is best explained by 
 the theory of demoniac assistance. 8 As was said above, he 
 could drive away a demon like the lamia by a more powerful 
 demon. 
 
 From the accusation of magic that was brought against 
 Apollonius his biographer is anxious to defend him. The 
 incident in the dungeon, however, by which Damis is said to 
 have been first convinced of his superhuman powers, if true, 
 plainly confirms the charge. The explanation here suggested 
 by Eusebius is that an impression made on the imagination of 
 Damis by his master's associate demon (fab TOV -n-aptdpov 6a.lfj.ovos) 
 
 1 Advcrsits Hie.rochi t 30 ; Sainovas yap clireXaiWt &\\<? a\\ov, y ^cm, 
 
 3 Ibid., 35 ; Spa. 5rj ovv, u>r (<f>fiv, ri]v iracrav airry n-apaSo^oiroi.lai' , <is 5id 
 5"s direr e \flro i/irovpylas.
 
 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 47 
 
 caused him to see the fetter apparently removed and then re- 
 placed. 1 Apollonius, it is here evident, did not know the 
 future ; for he prepared a long defence which, in the event, 
 was not needed. Moreover, if we examine that defence, we 
 shall find a sufficient justification of the charge of magic by 
 merely comparing his own definition of a sorcerer as a professor 
 of false wisdom (\{,evd6<To<j>os) with the things recorded of him by 
 Philostratus. In what he says to Domitian about the words 
 he had uttered on Necessity, he evades the true charge that he 
 had predicted his end ; and is thus placed before us as a 
 flatterer and a liar and anything rather than a philosopher. 
 Perhaps, however, the falsehood comes from his biographers. 
 In that case, where are the " men of highest education " of 
 " Philalethes " ? The splendour of the truth has convicted 
 them as plainly liars and uneducated men and jugglers. 2 
 
 Lastly, says Eusebius, arriving at the culmination, Philostra- 
 tus, having thrown doubt on the place and manner of his de- 
 parture from life, will have it that Apollonius went to heaven 
 bodily, accompanied by an unexpected song of maiden voices. 3 
 
 Selecting now, as an example of his false doctrine,* the 
 utterances attributed to him on the certainty of fate, Eusebius 
 ends with some commonplace libertarian declamation : 5 re- 
 marking finally that, should any still think fit to place 
 Apollonius among philosophers, he does not object, if only 
 they will clear him of the false ornaments affixed to him by 
 the writing under examination ; the real effect of such additions 
 being to calumniate the man himself under the guise of 
 raising him to divinity. 
 
 The moral of the Bishop of Csesarea's tract is, it may be 
 hoped, too obvious for comment. We may go on now to 
 consider briefly an interesting problem raised by the reforming 
 activity of the philosopher or prophet of Tyana. 
 
 Eusebius does not suggest that Philostratus himself had 
 either a hostile or a friendly intention with regard to Christi- 
 anity. Yet it seems likely that, living when he did, he had 
 
 1 Advtrsus Hieroclem, 39. 
 
 "Ibid.) 43 : ^ei/orat ^ro/xytDs *at dircuSevrovt /cal y6i)rat TT]S d.\rj0eias 
 TO ^yyo* 5iJ)\ey(t>. 
 
 8 /JM., 44. 4 -}) tv 56ynaffi. \fstv8oSotla. ravdpfa. s Ibid., 45-48.
 
 48 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 
 
 some slight bias one way or the other. One passage might be 
 adduced in support of the former view. The declaration of 
 Apollonius, that not even the supreme Deity can wash away 
 the stain of murder, if it were found in Julian, could safely be 
 set down as pointed against the Christian ecclesiastical doctrine. 
 To Philostratus, however, it probably appeared as simply a 
 re-affirmation of the higher ethical view, at once poetic and 
 philosophic, against the imaginations of the multitude that by 
 prayers or ceremonies the necessary expiation to be undergone 
 by the soul itself perhaps in a series of lives can be 
 dispensed with. This idea of an inflexible moral order, not to 
 be derived from arbitrary volitions, severe or indulgent, was 
 an important part of the Hellenic conception of an ethically 
 reformed religion ; but, to bring it into relief, no contrast was 
 needed except that which Plato had drawn between the 
 philosophic thinker on religion and the popular " medicine- 
 man." The aim of Philostratus, in spite of his introduction 
 of marvels, was to make it quite clear that Apollonius was not 
 this kind of person ; and indeed the position about sacrifices 
 which by universal consent was his, ought to be of itself 
 sufficient to prove that he was not. 
 
 While there is thus nothing to show hostility to Christianity 
 on the part of Philostratus, there is some slight evidence of a 
 not unfriendly intention. The Syrian emperors of the third 
 century, for whom he wrote, were themselves favourably dis- 
 posed to the new religion. And in representing Apollonius as 
 accused of perpetrating a ritual murder, may he not have 
 meant to hint at the absurdity of the vulgar accusations 
 against the Christians ? This seems at least possible. That 
 Christianity should become the exclusive religion of the 
 State he would certainly not have desired. What he hoped 
 for was, we may judge, a system of toleration accompanied by 
 ethical reform of the local cults wherever such reform might be 
 needed. Of Christianity itself he probably knew little. He 
 was not one of those who had caught a glimpse of the theo- 
 cratic aims of the Church. 1 Indeed Themistius the Peripatetic, 
 
 1 In spite of its defective information on the detail of Jewish antiquities, 
 there is evidence in the fifth book of his Histories that Tacitus had gained 
 some real insight into the spirit of intolerant theocracy which, at once 
 dislodged and liberated by the destruction of Jerusalem, was shaping for 
 itself a new embodiment in the incipient Catholic hierarchy. See especially 
 c. 5. On the support furnished by theocracy to monarchy, compare what 
 he says about the Hasmonsean kings, "qui mobilitate vulgi expulsi,
 
 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 49 
 
 and Ammianus Marcellinus the military historian, had scarcely 
 appreciated those aims in the latter part of the fourth century. 
 Even after the victory of Christianity they seem to have still 
 cherished dreams of a mutual toleration ; taking the ground 
 natural to sensible men of the world imbued with secular 
 culture who saw the general agreement of all the organised 
 doctrines, philosophic or religious, on practical morals. They 
 could hardly have imagined that what must have seemed to 
 men of their type so moderate and obvious a solution would 
 have to wait, not for its triumph but for a mere beginning of 
 its effective recognition, to the time of Locke. 
 
 The regime of " religious liberty," desirable as it must 
 always have seemed to statesmen who were not bigots, has not 
 always been practicable for governments sincerely anxious to 
 uphold freedom of opinion. The repression of the rising 
 Christian Church in the second century was probably, in its 
 inception, a policy similar to the legislation of modern States 
 against the reactionary conspiracies fomented by Catholic 
 organisation in its death-struggle; though the exact degree 
 of knowledge of those who attempted it, and the degree of 
 harshness in the method used, may be for ever impossible to 
 discern through the cloud of ecclesiastical legend. An attempt to 
 show how a more clearly conceived policy of the kind, aided 
 instead of thwarted by accident, might have been successful in 
 throwing Christianity back on the East, has been made by 
 M. Renouvierin his Uchronie. According to M. Renouvier's 
 hypothetical reconstruction of history, the official Stoicism 
 retains the direction of opinion ; the extra-legal power of the 
 Emperor is gradually reduced with a view to the restoration 
 of the Republic ; slavery is brought to an end by legislation 
 under the continued Stoical influence, instead of being left, as 
 it actually was, to be slowly extinguished in the Middle Ages 
 through economical causes unassisted by directing ideas. The 
 process of return from the type of society initiated by the 
 Csesarean revolution being thus accelerated, Europe about the 
 ninth century is a little in advance of what actually became its 
 condition in the nineteenth. The empire of the West has in 
 the meantime been resolved into a system of national republics 
 
 resumpta per arma dominatione fugas civium, urbium eversiones, fratrum 
 coniugum parentum neces aliaque solita regibus ausi superstitionem fove- 
 bant, quia honor sacerdotii firmamentutn potentiae adsumebatur " (Hist. v. 
 8). 
 
 4
 
 50 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 
 
 in friendly alliance. The Christian propaganda is re-admitted 
 when the force of the Catholic idea has spent itself in the East 
 in mutual massacre and abortive crusading. Thus, in the 
 hypothetical reconstruction, formal toleration of all sects, reli- 
 gious or philosophic, becomes at length the official system, as it 
 is in the actual modern world after a far more wasteful struggle. 
 
 It is tempting to take this sketch as a basis and to make modifi- 
 cations in it by giving a more definite part than M. Renouvierdoes 
 to the Neo-Pythagorean and Neo-Platonic movements. To bring 
 about, for example, the abolition of the customs of animal 
 sacrifice and of divination by inspection of victims, the ideas 
 of a reformer like Apollonius were necessary ; Stoicism having 
 somewhat derogated from its philosophical character by 
 defending the official religion as a whole. Again, to an 
 idealist the Neo-Platonic metaphysics ought to seem an advance 
 on the Stoic materialism. And indeed it seems clear that, 
 in the absence of Christianity, Neo-Platonism and not Stoicism 
 would finally have assumed the direction of opinion in the 
 Empire. Had this been the course of events, Graeco-Roman 
 civilisation would have preserved its organic continuity, and 
 the barbarian attack would doubtless have been thrown off. 
 In the latter part of the second century the conservative patriotism 
 of Celsus foresaw that, as things were, the latent civil war kept up 
 by the imperium in imperio of the Church would be fatal ; 
 that, unless the Christians could be persuaded to yield the 
 required allegiance to the State, the whole fabric would sooner 
 or later go down under the shock of invasion. He did not 
 indeed foresee the recovery ; but expressed the apprehension 
 that the religion of the Christians itself, as well as true philosophy, 
 would be submerged in universal chaos. This, as we know, 
 did not in the end come about ; though the prospect might 
 seem near being realised in the dark centuries of the West 
 between the end of antiquity and the beginning of new life in 
 the Middle Age. What then would have been the result if the 
 break-up had been averted ? Would Western civilisation have 
 assumed a fixed form analogous to those of the East though 
 superior, combining, let us say, the political order of China 
 with the higher speculative thought of India and with a legal 
 system that recognises rights as well as duties, but never 
 developing new forms of freedom or new lines of art and 
 thought ? Or would there have been such accelerated progress 
 as M. Renouvier has imagined? 
 
 A progressive movement might be conceived as starting
 
 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 51 
 
 from interaction between the Roman Empire and the free but 
 undisciplined tribes of the North, when these, kept at length 
 within their own boundaries, settled down to a life of compara- 
 tive peace and began to draw their higher culture, as they 
 would have done, from the old civilisation of Europe. We 
 might then suppose an ethnic republic arising in the North 
 say, in Scandinavia and, by offering to the South a new type 
 for imitation instead of the city-republic of the past, leading to 
 a system of independent national States. As the imperial 
 absolutism, according to the hypothesis, remains unconsecrated 
 by a new hierocracy, we should naturally suppose a transition 
 from the monarchical to the republican form less violent than 
 the French Revolution. Thus we should come round to M. 
 Renouvier's result in a different manner. It would be easy to 
 fill in details and, by selecting factors with a view to the re- 
 quired product, to show how every distinctive element in 
 modern civilisation might have been evolved. 
 
 M. Renouvier himself, however, at the conclusion of his 
 "apocryphal sketch," has sufficiently indicated at once the 
 possibilities and the limitations of this kind of reconstruction ; 
 and the scientific interest of any such attempt cannot, of course, 
 be in its positive result since the result is necessarily un- 
 verifiable though it may suggest new ways of looking at the 
 actual process of history. We are led to see that in the com- 
 plexity of real circumstances factors intervene which from time 
 to time make continuous progress impossible. 1 Perhaps it is 
 irrational even to desire that there should have been continuous 
 progress ; as Heraclitus thought Homer irrational for giving 
 utterance to the aspiration " that strife might be destroyed 
 from among gods and men " ; since this would mean the 
 destruction of the cosmic harmony itself. It is still possible 
 to apply the Ideological idea in Kant's sense to the historical 
 process. That is to say, we may use it as a "regulative idea " 
 to interpret history as it was ; though we may not use it to 
 inform us as to what history in general must have been. 
 Taking it in the first sense, and using the terms of post- 
 Kantian metaphysics, we might regard the pseudo-synthesis of 
 Athanasius and Augustine and the rest, itself entirely without 
 
 1 A recent example of this kind is the overgrowth of industrialism through- 
 out the civilised world. It is remarkable that two poets so unlike in many 
 respects as Wordsworth and Shelley foresaw the imminent evil of pluto- 
 cracy in the early years of the nineteenth century.
 
 52 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 
 
 human value, as the obstacle posited by the world-soul in order 
 to rise more explicitly to the idea of spiritual freedom. This 
 is not of course to deny that there are gleams of borrowed 
 light in their Kingdom of Darkness ; but it is to deny the too 
 anthropomorphic teleology of Comte, with its insistence that 
 the Catholic ideal, as one expression of the "human 
 providence," must have been a progressive phase in the 
 history of humanity. 1 The immanent reason in things, being 
 cosmic and not simply human, works in the affairs of man also 
 through pauses like night and winter. 
 
 Such seasons, we know, bear the germs of the future ; and 
 the future is more than simply a return to a vanished past. 
 To historical Christianity may be assigned on one side the 
 merit of partially appropriating the idealistic metaphysic which 
 was the legacy of Hellenic thought ; and, on the other side, of 
 preserving, in the documents to which it appealed for its 
 authoritative dogma, elements of ethical culture which, when 
 cleared of their dogmatic superstructure, could be seen to con- 
 tain something emotionally unique. In the Hebrew prophets 
 there is a more ardent, though not a purer and certainly not 
 a nobler, morality than that of classical antiquity even in its 
 final stage ; and the teaching of the Gospel has become, when 
 dissociated from a creed which was always extraneous to it, 
 the inspiration of a more impassioned, though not of a wider, 
 philanthropy. The first modern to bring out clearly the per- 
 manent ethical value of the Christian as well as of the Hebrew 
 documents was Spinoza, who was enabled to do it by having 
 discarded more systematically than any one before him the 
 whole framework of rabbinical and ecclesiastical dogma. Since, 
 however, the problem of making a new synthesis of the ele- 
 ments of ethical and intellectual culture still remains, there 
 seems to be some advantage in returning for inspiration to 
 more than one source. The movement of moral and religious 
 reform from within the Hellenic world failed, owing to the 
 circumstances of the time, as much through its merits as 
 through any shortcomings that may be ascribed to it. Its 
 philosophical idea of divine justice, as we have seen, was 
 opposed to the doctrine of vicarious punishment distilled by 
 Christian theology from the lower paganism. And for a time 
 
 1 Comte predicted results almost purely beneficent from modern in- 
 dustrialism ; though it must be allowed that his disciples have no more love 
 for the present hypertrophy of commerce than other philosophers.
 
 APOLLONIUS OF TYANA 53 
 
 the original Christian teaching, such as Bibical critics now 
 suppose it to have been, failed more tragically than the 
 Hellenic movement. Graeco-Roman civilisation indeed was 
 broken up ; and the Christian Church conquered : but, on the 
 other hand, the genuine Hellenism has been easier to re- 
 discover than the teaching of Jesus, 1 which, in its association 
 with the ecclesiastical system, became distorted almost if not 
 quite beyond recognition. In the endeavour after restoration, 
 may not the " Hebraist " and the " Hellenist," in the true 
 sense of both terms, regard themselves as co-operating to a 
 common result ? 
 
 1 Since writing this, I have made a more special study of Christian 
 origins, and have come to the conclusion that no personal Jesus is to be 
 discovered as the beginner of the teaching. Still, we may continue to 
 speak of an ethical " Teaching of Jesus," as we speak of the " Mosaic Law " 
 or of the " Orphic Theology." This teaching, whether having its be- 
 ginning in a personal founder or not, was at any rate in its characteristic 
 part an outgrowth from the Hebraism of the prophets and not of the 
 priests, and thus essentially separable from the ecclesiastical system which 
 appropriated it. And for a long time, as is known, the claim to be the 
 depositaries of the genuine traditional teaching was maintained by the 
 " Ebionites," who were repudiated as heretical by Catholic Christianity.
 
 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 
 
 RECENT historians of antiquity have shown how narrowly 
 Greece, at the opening of its great period, escaped falling under 
 the dominance of a theocracy on the Oriental model, started by 
 the dissemination of a religion at once new and archaic, and 
 proclaiming itself revealed. 1 The inference was perhaps too 
 obvious to draw, that what Orphism failed to do was done by the 
 Christian hierarchy seven or eight centuries later. In the 
 meantime a distinctively European ideal had been determined in 
 outline by the temporary efflorescence of republican States, and 
 by the growth of philosophy as a power not subordinated to 
 popular religion, but claiming to satisfy the highest aspirations 
 of the individual after speculative insight and a moral rule of 
 life. Thus it remained possible long afterwards to break again 
 the spiritual dominion of the East over the West. The 
 ambition of those who represent the system that dominated 
 European life in the middle period is nevertheless still active. 
 Some even think that, skilfully directed and taking advantage 
 of the ever-renewed reaction starting up from a past embodied 
 in institutions, it may yet prevail. Though this view seems to 
 take too little account of the critical work of the last century, 
 by which the whole historical basis of the old spiritual edifice 
 has been irremediably sapped, a comparison with the situation 
 near the close of the ancient world may show it not to be 
 altogether chimerical. In the treatise of Origen against Celsus, 
 we have the ablest defence that could be made in the third 
 
 1 See Ed. Meyer, Geschichte des Alterthums, vols. ii. and iii. ; and com- 
 pare the view of Prof. J. B. Bury in his History of Greece.
 
 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 55 
 
 century against the attack of a well-informed opponent of 
 Christianity in the second. Of the weight of that attack we can 
 only judge from the fragments preserved by the apologist ; but 
 these suffice to prove that, where learning was approximately 
 equal on the two sides, the advocates of the new creed were at 
 a distinctly lower level of rationality than its antagonists. Yet 
 the religion of the "barbarians," for all that reason could say 
 against it, triumphed. The event was made possible funda- 
 mentally by the social conditions of the age. It may, therefore, 
 be worth while for educated moderns to consider how far the 
 economic order, for example, which they allow to go on, favours 
 a revival of outworn orthodoxies that would bring with it again 
 something like the old Eastern structure of life. The Byzantine 
 age furnishes a warning as to the mode in which this could 
 return and overgrow a new world that appeared to have tran- 
 scended it once for all. 
 
 In Celsus and Origen we must not expect to meet with the 
 two ideals in what seems to us their purity. Celsus represents 
 the particular compromise between socialauthority and individual 
 freedom arrived at by the governing classes in the Roman Empire 
 during the second century of the Christian era ; that is, at a 
 time when the transition on the secular side was more than 
 half accomplished. This attitude is philosophically liberal and 
 politically conservative, as against revolutionaries whose aim is 
 by no means to go back to a freer past, but to establish a new 
 authority extending beyond action over all human thought. 
 We must bear in mind that we are confronted with the 
 anomaly, as it began to appear to liberal thinkers in the nine- 
 teenth century, of a civilisation running down. The chief 
 problem for the men that cared most for the slowly accumulated 
 results of the thought before them was to preserve what 
 remained. Thus we do not find in Celsus hopes for a higher 
 order of things in the future of the world. For him as for 
 Marcus Aurelius and Ecclesiastes, " the thing that hath been, 
 it is that which shall be." Or, if there is a difference, it 
 belongs only to the different phases in a cycle. Origen, on the 
 other hand, holds that a true religious faith, formerly limited to 
 a small people, has now been enlarged, and is to prevail over 
 the whole earth. This presents a kind of likeness to the modern 
 ideal of progress. But, as we can see plainly enough even in 
 his more conciliatory version of it, his creed, while continuing 
 the breaking down of local custom which had been begun by 
 the cosmopolitan empires, Asiatic and European, was bound
 
 56 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 
 
 to be fatal to that unrestricted liberty of philosophising which 
 for later antiquity was an accepted part of the inherited order. 
 Like Eusebius afterwards, he is fully conscious that he repre- 
 sents the " barbarians " as against the " Greeks." If his 
 philosophical learning enables him to take much from the 
 great Hellenic thinkers, it is to serve a cause which could never 
 have been theirs. 
 
 A lately published research of Prof. Gunkel 1 seems to show 
 that the root-idea of the spiritual transition must be traced back 
 finally to Babylonia. The imagination of a priest-king who is 
 to establish his dominion everywhere, and to make one religion 
 prevail universally, cannot at first have sprung up in a small 
 tribal group : it must have originated in a great empire. The 
 Jews were only the bearers of the Messianic idea, though it 
 became strongly Judaised in the process. Now, in whatever 
 way Christianity arose, it was, as Gunkel has shown, from the 
 first a highly syncretistic religion. Some of the Eastern ideas 
 it contains may not have come to it by way of Judaism : though 
 actual Judaism was much more composite than it appears in 
 its canonical Scriptures. In the case of this idea, however, 
 there is no difficulty in understanding the historical process. 
 For, as we know, the Judaised conception of world-wide theo- 
 cracy was especially that of the powerful " Catholic " groups 
 among the early believers. Thus (drawing again an obvious 
 inference) we may say that the theocratic ideal migrated from 
 Babylon to Rome, through the Messianic Jews first and then 
 the Catholic Christians. The old civilisation which had become 
 for the apocalyptists the symbol of the secular world-state was 
 the original source of their own dream of all-embracing religious 
 dominion. And the new empire of the West, having already 
 succumbed to the Eastern institution of absolute monarchy, 
 was the necessary recipient of the ideal which for their 
 successors took the form, no longer of a " New Jerusalem," 
 but of the universal " City of God." 
 
 Here we have one far-reaching illustration of Dr. Tylor's the- 
 orem regarding the immense potency of " survivals in culture." 
 Fortunately, ideals new as well as old can be revived, and the 
 human race has some control over the circumstances that give 
 a field for their growth. The conceptions of the republican 
 
 1 Zum religionsgeschichtlichcn Verstandnis des Neuen Testaments (Got- 
 tingen, 1903). Also published in translation in the Monist for April, 
 1903.
 
 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 57 
 
 state and of the liberty of philosophising were restored after they 
 had gone into latency ; and they have gained a larger scope. 
 What kind of conditions the modern world is providing for 
 their further development is a practically important question 
 the discussion of which would lead far. If civilisation should 
 continue to be based on the existence of a huge mass with no 
 instruction except what is of utility for material needs, then it 
 seems clear that culture of a rational type will not permanently 
 retain even such directing power as it has. 1 This remark, 
 however, is made only in passing. My object at present is, 
 not to bring into view all the complex issues, but to give a 
 straightforward account, mainly from the intellectual side, of a 
 particular controversy which throws light on the perennial 
 strife of ideals. 
 
 This account I have not subordinated to a thesis, though it 
 might serve to illustrate more than one. What I propose is 
 to set forth the debate itself in some detail, but with no 
 pretention of exhausting its interest. Thus I have not 
 attempted a complete reconstruction of Celsus, or a special 
 study of his whole view, on the lines of Keim 2 or of 
 Pelagaud. 3 If C. J. Neumann's promised reconstruction in 
 Greek had already appeared, I might not have set myself to go 
 through the treatise of Origen in full ; but, having made a 
 study of it, I find that there is room for a supplement to other 
 work. 4 The terse and classical style of Celsus does not 
 admit of condensation ; though Origen calls his occasional 
 restatement of a position tautology, and makes this the excuse 
 for lengthy new dissertations of his own. Abbreviation of his 
 argument can thus only be by selection. Origen, on the other 
 hand, though sufficiently readable, has the patristic verbosity. 
 It is quite practicable to put the whole substance of many 
 arguments in less space than they occupy. If they do not 
 usually gain in the process, that, I am afraid, is the fault of the 
 arguments. I do not think the statement of them will be 
 
 1 Meyer's remarks on the rise of capitalism in the Greek world are in this, 
 relation of extreme interest. He points out that its evil effects were for a 
 time masked by the rapid political and economic advancement of the State. 
 See Geschickte des Alttrthunis, iii. 305, and compare v. 884: "Wieru 
 alien Zeiten gehen auch in Griechenland der Sieg des Capitalismus und die 
 Proletarisirung der Massen Hand in Hand." 
 
 2 Celsus' Wahrcs Wort (1873). * Etude sur Cehe (1878). 
 
 4 Patrick's Apology of Origen (1892) is on different lines.
 
 58 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 
 
 found to be unfair. In summarising a Father of the Church, 
 "difficile est satiram non scribere." 
 
 The edition I have used is the new one by Koetschau. 1 
 From Koetschau's introduction I give the facts it is necessary 
 to bear in mind as to the time and place of composition. The 
 treatise was composed probably at Caesarea in Palestine. Its 
 date (as established by Neumann) is 248. Celsus wrote his 
 work against the Christians sometime between 177 and 180. 
 Origen's reply, we learn from the dedication, was written in 
 response to a request of his friend Ambrosius, who sent him 
 a copy of the work of Celsus, entitled the True Word 
 ('AX?707;s A(fyos). Who Celsus was, Origen himself does not know. 
 He would like to identify him with an Epicurean of the same 
 name who wrote against magic, and to whom Lucian dedicated 
 his exposure of Alexander the "false prophet;" but he 
 discovers by degrees that this conjecture has too little 
 plausibility, and at length ceases to make his points dependent 
 on it. Celsus was in fact a Platonist. As Origen was of the 
 group of Fathers who, in their borrowings from philosophy, 
 found most that seemed to their purpose in Plato, the 
 opponents have to this extent something in common. Both 
 for this and for other reasons, the apologist does not find it 
 possible to keep up consistently the tone of contempt which he 
 assumes in his " Proem " towards the assailant of the faith. 
 
 Of Origen's reputed heterodoxy little appears in the treatise 
 before us. Those who wish to know exactly how he mitigated 
 his creed by a philosophic doctrine of " world-periods," or by 
 the theory of a "restitution of all things," must consult his 
 Principles. We find now and then hints of a less damnatory 
 eschatology ; 2 but this does not seem to affect the position 
 that, to whomsoever salvation comes, it must in the end be 
 through acceptance of Jesus Christ as the Saviour. From the 
 first it is obvious that the contest is not between rival 
 philosophies, each to be rationally maintained. Origen assumes 
 that Christianity is a revelation to be received by faith. Greek 
 
 1 Die gricchischen christlichen Schriflsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte 
 herausgegeben von der Kirchenvater-Commission der Konigl. Preussischen 
 Akademie der Wissenschaflen. Origenes, I., II., Leipzig, 1899. 
 
 2 See in particular Contra Celsum, vi. 26. It is not without danger, 
 says Origen, to commit what is meant clearly to writing (d\\' ovS 1 dnivdwoif 
 rt]v TUV TOIOVTWV ffa<f>rjvficLv Tricrrevcrai. ypa<f>rj). The mitigation cannot 
 safely be brought to the knowledge of the multitude, hardly held in check 
 as it is even by the fear of eternal punishment.
 
 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 59 
 
 philosophy, so far as it claims independence, is treated as a 
 hostile power, not indeed without persuasiveness to those who 
 are grounded in its principles, though precisely for that reason 
 an apostolic warning (Col. ii. 8) was necessary against it. The 
 Old and New Testaments are held unquestioningly to be the 
 inspired word of God. If the limit between canonical and 
 uncanonical matter was still indeterminate, that in no way 
 affects the general principle. When Celsus speaks of 
 " inspired " poets or philosophers, his language has not much 
 more in common with Origen's in reference to the Scriptures 
 than the modern literary sense of "inspiration" has in 
 common with the sense it conveyed to a text-quoting 
 theological disputant of the sixteenth or seventeenth century. 
 The difference is that in the early centuries of our era the man 
 of ecclesiastical authority was the man of the future, while the 
 man of liberal and rational culture was the man of the past. 
 
 The opening of the treatise gives us an insight into the 
 fanaticism with which the ancient world was being assailed. 
 Celsus brings against the Christians the ordinary charge of 
 holding unlawful assemblies. A civilised man finding himself 
 among Scythians and unable to escape, replies Origen, would 
 rightly live in secret in his own manner with any whom he 
 could persuade to do likewise. Now what is lawful among 
 "the nations" regarding statues and "godless polytheism" 
 is as bad as the customs of the Scythians or anything more 
 impious than these. Similarly those would do well who should 
 secretly conspire against a tyrant that aimed at destroying their 
 city. Thus the Christians are right in making compacts 
 forbidden by the law against that tyrant whom they call the 
 Devil. 
 
 Celsus remarks that although the doctrine is of barbarian . 
 that is, Oriental origin, 1 he does not blame it on this ground, 
 for the barbarians have shown themselves competent to make 
 discoveries ; but the Greeks are better at judging and con- 
 firming and putting in practice the things discovered. So they 
 can do in the case of Christianity, was the reply : but it is to 
 be added that the Christians have a diviner mode of proving 
 their doctrine than the Greek dialectic ; 2 namely, by " spirit 
 
 1 i. 2: fiippapov HwOev elvcu TO doy/j.a. 
 
 - Ibid: o'tKeia. diroSei^is rou \6yov, deiOT^pa. irapa. TTJV airb dia\(KTiKr) j
 
 60 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 
 
 and power," as the Apostle said, or, in other words, from 
 the fulfilment of prophecy and from miracles. 
 
 Early in the treatise the difficult question is raised as to the 
 precise grounds assigned for the repression of Christianity. 
 
 Celsus expresses approval of the conduct of the Christians 
 in so far as they cannot be brought to renounce doctrines they 
 have sincerely embraced ; l but observes that, if they have had 
 to undergo persecution, this is only what has happened to 
 philosophers like Socrates. 2 In other passages also he speaks 
 in the same tone ; but on the other hand he treats some that 
 have been punished as merely executed criminals. These no 
 doubt were they who (as he mentions) publicly insulted statues 
 and abused the gods. We must remember that the Christians 
 in the end conquered, and that they had no scruple in exercis- 
 ing control over the sources of information. Not a single book 
 directed against them has been allowed to reach us, except, 
 like this of Celsus, in the fragments preserved by an opponent. 
 
 Origen in a later passage puts it on record that up to this 
 time (that is, near the middle of the third century) extremely 
 few Christians have suffered death for their opinions. 3 He 
 ascribes this of course to supernatural protection. The genuine 
 dislike of a government not yet theocratic for anything that 
 savoured of religious persecution, even when it seemed politi- 
 cally necessary, was quite unintelligible to him. The respect 
 of Celsus for the martyrs he supposes to be artfully assumed. 
 Here, he says, Celsus conceals his Epicureanism, and speaks 
 as if he believed in a divine element in man. 4 
 
 The ethical teaching of Christianity and its condemnation of 
 images, Celsus points out, is not new. Origen partly agrees : 
 for if these teachings had not been written under the form of 
 " common notions," in the hearts of men generally, how could 
 God justly have punished them for their sins? 6 
 
 The accusation of relying on the utterance of names and 
 magical formulae, he finds to contain an allusion to the Christian 
 exorcists. But, he replies, these cast out devils not by the 
 power of enchantments but by the name of Jesus and by 
 
 M.S. 2 i. 3. 
 
 3 iii. 8 : 6\iyoi /card Kaipous Kai <T<f>65pa. fvapidfj,r]Toi virtp TTJS U 
 
 l. 
 
 *i. 8. 5 i. 4, 5-
 
 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 61 
 
 declaring the histories concerning him. 1 So powerful is that 
 name that even bad men can sometimes cast out devils by it. 
 Celsus indeed knows this, for he asks why the Saviour con- 
 demns those that have done works like his own. 
 
 To the charge of keeping the doctrine secret 2 he replies 
 that the chief Christian doctrines, the Virgin-birth, the 
 Crucifixion, the Resurrection, the Judgment, are better 
 known than those of the philosophers. For the rest, the 
 philosophers too have the distinction between exoteric and 
 esoteric discourses. 3 And the mysteries in general, whether 
 of Greeks or barbarians, have not been attacked for their 
 secresy. Then why whose of Christianity ? 
 
 Celsus commends rational method, apart from which those 
 who receive dogmas by faith are subject to every kind of decep- 
 tion. "And he compares with us those that believe without 
 reason in the begging priests of the Mother of the gods and in 
 observers of signs, in divinities like Mithras and Sabazius, and 
 anything anyone has met with, apparitions of Hecate or of 
 some other demon or demons." 
 
 " He says that some, willing neither to offer a rational 
 account nor to answer questions about the object of their 
 faith, make use of the phrases, ' Do not examine, but believe,'* 
 and ' Thy faith will save thee,' and ' Evil is the wisdom in the 
 world, but folly is a good.' " To this Origen replies that doubt- 
 less acceptance of doctrines as the result of examination is the 
 ideal ; but it is impracticable except for the few. Among the 
 Christians not less than among others there are those that 
 examine ; that is, as he explains, who are skilled in the inter- 
 pretation of what is " symbolical " in the prophets and the 
 gospels. The Christian inculcation of doctrines to be received 
 by faith has raised the multitude to a higher moral life. And, 
 as a matter of fact, the ordinary adherents of philosophic 
 schools accept the doctrines of their own teachers without 
 systematic comparison with those of others. All human things 
 
 1 i. 6 : ov yap Ka.Ta.Kr)\ri(rtffiv ivxtetv doKoviriv dXXa r$ 6v6fj.an 'I-rjvov /j.tra. 
 TTJJ aira~/ye\la.s T&V irepl avrbv IffTOpiur. 
 
 - i. 7 : Kpv<f>tot> T& 86yfjLa. 
 
 ' Misunderstanding of this phrase had begun. The tffurepiKoi \6yoi 
 were net a secret doctrine reserved for adepts. (See Grant's Ethics of 
 Aristotle.) 
 
 4 i, 9 : /J.J) i^ra.'fe dXXo. irifrrevffov.
 
 62 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 
 
 depend on faith. To act, men must have faith in the recurrence 
 of harvest after seed-time, and generally in the prosperous 
 result of an event where the issue is doubtful. Is it not 
 then more reasonable to have faith in God ? 1 
 
 Why, he asks, does Celsus, in asserting a community of 
 reason among the nations, omit the Jews and treat their 
 historians alone as unworthy of credence ? 2 His refusal to 
 allow of an allegorical interpretation of Moses is comparable to 
 the procedure of the Platonic Thrasymachus in refusing 
 permission to Socrates to define justice as he likes. 3 In the 
 assertion that there have been many conflagrations and deluges 
 he tacitly associates himself with those who say that the world 
 is ungenerated (dytvrjrov elvai rbv K6ff/j.ov). Let him demonstrate 
 this. If he puts forward the dialogues of Plato, we shall 
 tell him that it is permitted to us for our part to believe that 
 the divine spirit dwelt in the pure and pious soul of Moses, 
 who rose above everything generated and attached himself 
 to the artificer of the whole, whose works he made manifest 
 more clearly than Plato and the others. If he asks us the 
 reasons of such faith, let him first give the reasons of that 
 which he has asserted without demonstrations 
 
 Celsus argues, Why cannot we Christians confess the one 
 God under any customary name? Why this stress on the 
 name of Adonai or Sabaoth as distinguished from Zeus or any 
 other by which the supreme Deity has been called in various 
 nations? 5 Origen replies by an appeal to those philosophers 
 (viz., the Stoics and Epicureans) who contend for a natural 
 element in the giving of names, in opposition to those who 
 hold, with Aristotle, that words are merely conventional signs. 
 Moreover, the adepts in a secret philosophy are aware of the 
 peculiar efficacy of certain angelic names (Michael, Gabriel, 
 Raphael). So also the name of " our Jesus " has visibly 
 displayed its efficacy in the casting out of myriads of devils. And 
 
 1 i. 1 1 : iro;j S'OI)K ev\oywrepov, irdvTuv ruv dvffpwirivuv iria- 
 
 2 i. 14. Celsus had somehow arrived at the view that the books of 
 Moses were a late compilation from widely-diffused pagan myths, such as 
 that of a Flood. Cf. i. 21, and, among later passages, iv. 42 : el fj.rj &pa. 
 ovSt MwiWws otfTai tlvai rrjv ypa<t>T)v d\\d TLVUV Tr\ti6vw ' TOIOVTOV yap 
 SrjXoi rb 'irapaxapATTOVTes Kai padiOvpyovvTfS rbv Aev/caXtova,' K, r. \. 
 
 i. 17. 4 i. I?. 5 i. 24.
 
 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 63 
 
 those who are skilled in charms report that they lose their 
 power when translated into another language. 1 
 
 The coming of Jesus, objects Celsus, is recent. How 
 wonderful, then, replies Origen, have been the results of his 
 teaching in so short a time ; so many rescued from degradation 
 by it. Such has been the moralising effect of what Celsus and 
 those who agree with him call a " word injurious to human 
 
 life " (X6yov XvfjM.tv6fj.evov rbv TUV dvdpuiruv fiiov) that Some have 
 
 even gone so far as to abstain from lawful sexual intercourse. 8 
 The word could not have spread everywhere against the 
 opposition of rulers and peoples alike, unless it had been the 
 word of God. And Celsus himself admits on occasion that it 
 has not been received, as he would make out elsewhere, by the 
 ignorant only. 3 
 
 From this point onward Origen changes his mode of reply .* 
 Hitherto he has tried to bring the objections of Celsus under 
 heads and to indicate briefly the answers to them, with a view 
 to making in the end an organic unity of the discourse. 
 Henceforth, " to spare time," he will put them down as they 
 occur in the book and grapple with them as he goes on. This 
 procedure, while no doubt lengthening the treatise of Origen 
 (according to the well-known literary rule), has been of ad- 
 vantage to modern readers, who are thus in a position to know 
 approximately how Celsus ordered his argument. But for the 
 change of plan, as Koetschau remarks, reconstructions such as 
 have been or are to be attempted, would have been out of the 
 question. 
 
 It appears from Origen's next chapter 5 that Celsus early in 
 his work brought forward an imaginary Jew as opposing the 
 supernatural claims of Jesus. The reason of this is evident 
 if the Graeco-Roman would had no trace of an independent 
 
 a i. 2C. With this may be compared the very ingenious argument in the 
 De Mysttriis vii. 4, 5, on the mystic virtue of "barbarian " as distinguished 
 f rom Greek names in religious invocations. (Koetschau draws attention to 
 the parallel in a note to Contra Cdsum v. 41, where the idea recurs.) 
 
 2 i. 26. If Origen here and in other passages did not dwell so strongly 
 on this point, it might seem unfair to recall his practical interpretation of 
 Matt. xix. 12, recorded in Church-history. The distinctive Caiholic 
 doctrine is stated in the sequel (viii. 55) : dXXa KCLI &yt<r0ai yvvcuna 4irtTpf\{/fv 
 Tjfj.lv 6 6e6s, wj ov irdvruv -xupovvTuv TO bianfrfpov TOVT^CTTI TO irdvrrj Ka9ap6v. 
 Ecclesiasticism and its effects will seem to many a verification rather than a 
 disproof of the phrase thrown out by Celsus. 
 
 3 i. 27. 4 See Proem, 6. s i. 28.
 
 64 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 
 
 tradition about the events to which Christianity appealed. In 
 that case, what was more obvious than to consult the Jews as 
 to the ground there might be for the Christian assertions ? For 
 the new religion did not conceal its dependence on Judaism. 
 That Celsus^ really obtained the substance of ihis portion of his 
 attack from Jews with whom he had conversed is established 
 by the traces of similar hostile stories which have been 
 brought to light by students of the Talmud. 1 Jesus ben 
 Pandira can hardly be other than a variant of Jesus the son of 
 the Roman soldier Panthera. The interesting question for us 
 is, whether any Jewish tradition about Jesus, even hostile, is 
 really independent of Christian sources. Now, in what Celsus 
 ascribes to the Jew, there is to be found, on the positive side 
 and apart from acute negative criticism of the evidence, only an 
 obvious conjectural attempt at naturalistic explanation of alleged 
 supernatural events. The apologetic view that Panthera is 
 merely an anagram on the word " Parthenos" is sufficiently plaus- 
 ible. 2 Thus, Origen is securely entrenched when he says that, the 
 gospels being the only evidence, opponents, Jewish or heathen, 
 have no right to pick out what lends itself to a bad construc- 
 tion and refuse to believe the rest. Yet he must have had 
 an obscure feeling that the argument might recoil. At any 
 rate, he thinks it important that Josephus, not being a 
 Christian, should have testified to the reality of personages in 
 the Christian legend like John the Baptist and James the Just 
 (Ant, xviii. 5, 2 and xx. 9, i). 3 The passage on Jesus (Ant. 
 xviii. 3, 3) was clearly not in the text when he wrote ; for he 
 does not mention it, though it would have been more to the 
 purpose. Both of the other passages, of course, may be 
 Christian interpolations dating from before his time. The 
 second has been manipulated since he wrote ; the present text 
 of Josephus not agreeing with his account. 4 
 
 J For an exhaustive recent inquiry into this subject, see Herford, 
 Christianity in Talmud and Midrash (1903). 
 
 2 1 have not followed this view to its sources, but take the statement of it 
 from Patrick, The Apology of Origen, p. 23 n. I. 
 
 3 i. 47. Origen, however, mentions (i. 48) that the Jews do not connect 
 John the Baptist with Jesus. 
 
 4 About the passage referring specially to Jesus there ought never to have 
 been any doubt in the minds of European scholars since the treatise of 
 Origen against Celsus was in their hands. Yet, although the silence of 
 Origen corroborates the plain marks of forgery in the passage itself, it has 
 been the subject of volumes of controversy, and has hardly been officially 
 abandoned till our own days.
 
 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 65 
 
 Celsus himself was firmly convinced that all claims to the 
 possession of an authoritative supernatural revelation were 
 founded in illusion or imposture. This was fundamentally his 
 attitude, not merely to Christianity, but to the other new 
 gospels that were then wandering over the world. He believed 
 in philosophy as the true " wisdom," and defended the estab- 
 lished system of mutually tolerant civic and national cults, 
 partly on the ground that they did no harm. This philosophic 
 attitude went along with a certain positive attachment to them 
 on patriotic and aesthetic grounds. The gods of the civic 
 religions were also the gods of literature. Why should 
 their worship a defender of the old order might say give place 
 to barbarian rites and myths, whose claim to possess greater 
 truth was only the expression of a more sophisticated stage of 
 popular religion, in which it begins to pass over from spon- 
 taneous natural fancy into deliberate organisation by jugglers 
 and fanatics ? But the remark applies perfectly to Celsus that 
 the educated world of antiquity, through the development of 
 its own culture, had ceased to understand the religions by 
 which it was surrounded. 1 Still less were the more archaistic 
 forms of religious belief intelligible. Celsus, it is true, has a 
 keen eye for analogies, both Greek and Oriental, to the 
 Christian story, such as miraculous births and descents into 
 Hades and resurrections ; but he cannot penetrate to its origin 
 because he cannot penetrate to the origin of these. He 
 apparently supposes them to have been tales devised 
 by the men themselves who came to be revered as 
 gods, or fabrications by their followers, or at best half-sincere 
 fictions having their beginning in visual hallucinations. 
 Modern criticism long attempted explanations on similar 
 lines. If, however, in comparative mythology as in the other 
 sciences, truth is the daughter of time, then the outlook has 
 been changed. For, according to what now seems an estab- 
 lished position, no human hero ever becomes one of the great 
 gods, a God such as Jesus was for undoubtedly early 
 Christians. 3 Many of the heroes, on the contrary, were them- 
 
 1 Cf. Meyer, Geschichte des Alttrthums ii. li. 
 
 2 See Meyer, Geschichte des Alterthums ii. 277. The case of deified 
 kings, as Meyer says, is essentially different. So also, it might be added, 
 is the representation in India of particular persons as avatars of divine 
 powers. The application to Christianity is not pointed out ; but a very 
 significant passage in relation to Christian origins may be quoted from vol. 
 iii. 85. The historian is speaking of Gaza in the Persian time. " Ein 
 
 5
 
 66 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 
 
 * 
 
 selves gods brought down to earth. The ancient god (solar or 
 other) who had descended into the underworld, and risen again, 
 became, as for example in the typical case of Orpheus, a human 
 hero of whose life this adventure formed part. The process of 
 myth-formation not being understood, a new story of this type 
 would necessarily be found elusive so far as the question of 
 origin was concerned, however absurd it might appear 
 philosophically. Thus, as we might expect, Celsus is at his 
 strongest in showing the intrinsic irrationality of the new 
 supernatural story. The attempt by the Jewish spokesman at 
 a reduction of the life of Jesus to natural events, is on the 
 whole of less interest. Still, there are some points on both 
 sides of the controversy worth bringing out. 
 
 On the sacrifice of Christ, Origen takes the view which was 
 also that of the Eastern Gnosis. A similar view of the mean- 
 ing of sacrifice was no doubt latent in the Chthonian religion 
 of Greece. And the position is not limited by Origen to the 
 one sacrifice which is for his Christian belief central, but is 
 applied to the case of every just man who has voluntarily 
 offered himself for the sake of humankind. There is some- 
 thing, he holds, in the nature of things, which exacts this kind 
 of offering in order to avert the evil worked by certain dark 
 powers : 1 the sacrifice is not conceived as a piacular offering 
 to the supreme God. Mythological though the passage 
 is in expression, it is worth dwelling on for a moment in 
 contrast with the petrified creeds. 
 
 Unfortunately there is not much that has this kind of specul- 
 ative interest. In proximity to the passage cited, we meet with 
 the argument so familiar to eighteenth century apologists : 
 Whence came to the disciples of Jesus, if they had not wit- 
 nessed their master's resurrection, the strong motive they must 
 have had for setting themselves against the laws at once of the 
 Jews and of other nations ? Again : Where, if the disciples 
 had not the power of working miracles, could they have 
 
 grosses Volkergemisch fand sich hier zusammen ; aber das Uebergewicht 
 haben die Aramaeer : der Hauptgott von Gaza heisst jetzt Marna, d. i. 
 aramaeisch ' unser Herr.' " Marna, the Syrian " Lord " of the cosmopolitan 
 Phoenician town, at once suggests fiapdv add (6 xtf/nos r^/cet), the early 
 Christian password. [See MARANATHA in Ency, Bib.'} 
 
 J i. 31 : efrcds yap elvat. 4v rrj <j>ti<reL rCiv Trpay/jLaruv Karri, rivas diro^p-^rovs 
 Kai 5uo"X^7rrous rols 7roXXo?s Amyous <f>vfftv Towfrnp, ws Hva. dlnaiov virtp rod 
 KOIVOV diro6av6vTa eicovfflws dTrorpoiria(rfj.ovs ^woielv 
 evepyovvriav \oifJ.obs i) 5vffir\otas ij n rwv ira.pair\f)<Tlw>.
 
 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 67 
 
 gained the courage to preach an innovating doctrine, when 
 they had no skill in dialectic, like the Greek sages ? l Origen 
 has anticipated more recent theologians in appealing to the 
 zoological fact of parthenogenesis in support of the Virgin- 
 birth. 8 He adds that if, as is the opinion of many of the 
 Greeks also, the world had a beginning, the production of the 
 first men must have been more paradoxical than the birth of 
 Jesus, " half in the manner of other men." He then brings in 
 the story that Plato was in reality the son of Apollo by a 
 virgin birth, as a proof that the Greeks too thought it appropriate 
 to regard a great man as not begotten by a human father. 
 The introduction of " the Greek fables about Danae and 
 Melanippe and Auge and Antiope," he dismisses as buf- 
 foonery. Incredulity in relation to these, however, could not 
 be declared out of character in a Jew. 
 
 The Jew of Celsus asks : What trustworthy witness saw the 
 dove descending on Jesus, or who heard the voice ? 3 After a 
 prologue on the difficulty of demonstrating the truth of 
 histories, especially when mixed with marvels, as in the case, for 
 example, of the siege of Troy, Origen here finds fault with the 
 " personification." If the person asking the question had been 
 an Epicurean, or a Democritean, or a Peripatetic, it would have 
 been in character. Attributed to a Jew, who himself believes 
 greater marvels than that of the Holy Spirit descending in the 
 form of a dove, it is out of place. 4 The reply of some might 
 be, that the account was not written down from report, but 
 through inspiration of that Spirit which taught Moses the 
 history older than his own time. One who understands the 
 spiritual meaning can show why the appearance was in the 
 form of a dove and in no other. 5 If the Jew asks for a proof 
 of the mission of Jesus, let him first supply a proof of the 
 mission of Moses. 6 Traces of that Holy Spirit once 
 seen in the form of a dove are still preserved among the 
 Christians, who charm away demons and accomplish many 
 cures, and sometimes have visions of future things according 
 to the will of the Word. 7 
 
 Of the argument that the prophecies said to refer to " the 
 things concerning Jesus" may fit other matters, he admits 
 the plausibility ; 8 but he thinks he can furnish a satisfactory 
 
 M. 38. Cf. 46. 4 i. 43- 7 i-46. 
 
 2 i. 37. 5 i. 44. 3 i. 50. 
 
 i. 41- 6i - 45-
 
 68 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 
 
 answer. He mentions, for example, the existence of the cave 
 in Bethlehem, shown by the inhabitants as the place where 
 Jesus was born, and held to be such even by those alien to the 
 faith. 1 The rejection of Jesus by the Jews, though he mani- 
 festly fulfilled the prophecies, is explained by the innate con- 
 servatism of human nature, especially as regards dogmas. 2 
 The suffering Christ, Origen argues, was predicted in Isaiah 
 liii. He mentions, indeed, that the Jews interpret this as 
 referring to the people of Israel, but contends that it is not 
 fully explicable unless referred to a person, as by the Christians. 
 Celsus and his Jew and all those that have not believed in 
 Jesus fail to recognise that the prophecies speak of two 
 comings of the Christ among men, one in which he is subject 
 to human affections, and the other in which he is glorified. 3 
 He wonders why Celsus does not say anything about the star 
 in the East, but volunteers an explanation of what is related. 
 First, it was a new star, of the nature of a comet. Such stars, 
 as is generally held, appear on the eve of extraordinary events. 
 He thinks he can make the Greeks understand the visit of the 
 Magi. The demons to whom they owed the virtue of their 
 accustomed incantations were quelled by the greater power 
 born into the world. Hence they desired to seek this out ; 
 and, possessing as they did the prophecies of Balaam which 
 Moses also wrote down, they guessed the meaning of the star 
 (Num. xxiv. 17).* Next he undertakes to refute the incred- 
 ulity of the Jew regarding Herod's massacre of the children. 
 Herod was moved by the Devil, who from the beginning was 
 plotting against the Saviour. 5 
 
 Replying to a description of the apostles as ignorant and 
 disreputable tax-gatherers and so forth, Origen contends that 
 the choice of unlettered men was appropriate, since the Gospel 
 was to be preached as a divine revelation, not to be advocated 
 as a mere philosophical doctrine with the aid of dialectic and 
 rhetoric. 6 Perhaps, he remarks, support for the attack on the 
 character of the Apostles was found in the Epistle of Barnabas 
 (v. 9), where it is said that Jesus chose for his own apostles 
 men lawless beyond all lawlessness (virtp ira<rav dvo 
 
 1 i. 51 : KO.I rb 5eiKvti[j.fvov TOVTO Sia^6r)Tov tariv iv rols rdirois Kai trapa. TO'S 
 T/}J wiffreus aXXorpiois, iis &pa 4v rip crrrT/Xcu'y rotfry 'o VTTO 
 Kai 6av/ML^6/j.fos yeyfvvrjTai 'Irjcrovs. 
 
 2 i. 52. 5 i. 6l. 
 
 3 i. 56. 6 i. 62 
 
 4 i. 60. 63
 
 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 69 
 
 But Jesus came, he replies, to save sinners ; and what greater 
 manifestation of his power to heal was possible than to raise 
 such men into patterns of pure life ? Philosophy tells of a 
 case or two like the conversion of Polemo ; but what are these 
 to the work that has been done by Christianity ? With their 
 boasted care for the public good, its accusers ought at least 
 to offer a tribute of thanks to the utility of the new method, if 
 they cannot acknowledge its truth. 1 
 
 If Jesus was a god, asks Celsus or the Jew, why was it 
 necessary that he should be taken away to Egypt to save him 
 from death at the hands of Herod ? Origen answers that he 
 was of composite nature, 2 at once God and man, and had not, 
 as Celsus appears to think that he ought to have had, a body 
 like those of the Homeric gods, shedding ichor instead of 
 blood. 3 Incongruously, as Origen thinks, the Jew is made to 
 ask, as if he was an educated Greek, what great thing Jesus has 
 done comparable to the deeds ascribed to Perseus, Amphion 
 and others, who were said to be of the seed of the gods. He 
 replies partly by reference to the miracles of healing and so 
 forth, still worked in the name of Jesus ; partly by an appeal 
 to the mild and philanthropic disposition produced in those 
 who have accepted the Christian doctrine in reality and not 
 hypocritically for the sake of a livelihood or of human 
 necessities.* To the Jew's charge that the impression Jesus 
 made was due to magic, he replies that it is not the way of 
 magicians to use their arts in order to turn men from evil to 
 good. 5 
 
 Celsus makes his Jew accuse the Christians of deserting the 
 law of their fathers. This Origen takes to imply a misunder- 
 
 1 i. 64. 
 
 2 i. 66 : <TvvBer6v n xprj^a. <pa/j.ev avrov yeyovtvai. 
 
 3 Elsewhere (ii. 36) Origen says, in answer to the question whether 
 there was any such manifestation of divinity at the crucifixion, that it is to 
 be found in the " blood and water " of John xix. 34. 
 
 4 i. 67 : Kal <frt ye rb 6vo/j,a TOV 'iTjcroO ^K<rr<i<rm fj^v Siavolas avdp&iruv 
 d<(>iffrtjffi Kal da.lfi.ovas ijSTfj 8 Kal vfoovs, tfnroiei dt Qavpafflav rtva irpa6n)Ta 
 Kal KaTaffTo\T]v TOV ijffovs Kal <J>i\av0puirlav Kal xpyffTorriTa Kal ^tepoYijTo. 
 tv rots /U.TJ 5ia ra PIWTIKO. ij rivas XP e ' as avOpumicas viroKpivaptvois dXXA 
 TrapaSe^a/u&ois yvtjcriws rbv Trtpl 6(ov Kal XpicrroO Acai TTJS taontvr]* Kpiffews 
 \6yov. 
 
 5 i. 68. This was urged by Philostratus in his defence of Apollonius of 
 Ty na against the accusation of magic. (Koetschau is of opinion that 
 Origen had read the Life of Apollonius, and that he intentionally ignored it. )
 
 70 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 
 
 standing, on the part of Celsus, of the real position of the 
 Jewish Christians, to whom the accusation must be assumed 
 to be addressed. The Ebionites, as they are called, do not 
 depart from the Jewish law. 1 A later passage, however, 
 proves that Celsus knew of the Ebionites. 2 Of course they 
 were not necessarily Jews by race ; nor according to the 
 apostolic legend, which he may have thought himself entitled 
 to follow, did Jewish converts to Christianity necessarily con- 
 tinue the practice of the law. 
 
 Here as in many other places the apologist exercises himself, 
 not without a touch of vanity, in trying to show that he has a 
 more accurate knowledge than his adversary of the shades of 
 difference among Jews and Christians. However this may be 
 in particular cases, the very effort is a tribute to the extensive 
 information that Celsus had acquired. That he had gone 
 beneath the surface appears sufficiently from the nullity of 
 Origen's reply to the argument, again assigned to the Jew, that 
 the Christians in their teaching about " the resurrection of the 
 dead, and the judgment of God, and a reward for the just and 
 fire for the unjust," have introduced nothing that was not 
 already familiar, that is, to the Jewish apocalyptists. 8 " Our 
 Jesus," he immediately answers, " seeing the Jews doing 
 nothing worthy of the doctrines contained in the prophets, 
 taught them by a parable that the kingdom of God should be 
 taken from them and given to those from the nations." A 
 proof of this transference of the kingdom to the Gentiles is 
 the fact that the Jews have now no prophets or miracles to 
 show, whereas some of the signs that are still found among 
 the Christians are even greater than the former (as promised 
 in John xiv. 12).* 
 
 To the objection that the predictions assigned to Jesus 
 were feigned after the event, Origen replies by simply (or 
 rather doubly) begging the question. He points to the fulfil- 
 ment, after the time of Jesus, of his predictions of (i) perse- 
 cutions for the mere profession of Christianity, (2) the preach- 
 ing of it to all nations, (3) the destruction of Jerusalem. 
 These prophecies, he says, could not have been written after 
 the event : for it is not to be supposed that the hearers of 
 Jesus handed down the teaching of the Gospels as a 
 
 1 ii. i. 2 v. 61. 3 ii. 5. 
 
 ii. 8 : Kal ei vitrroi 4<rfj.fv XtyovTfS, xai ijfJ.e'is
 
 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 71 
 
 mere oral tradition and left their disciples without written 
 memorials. 1 
 
 In order to remove, in the eyes of " unbelievers," the im- 
 probability of the resurrection of Jesus, he gravely quotes from 
 the Republic the story of Er, the son of Armenius, who was 
 revived at so long an interval as twelve days after his death. 3 
 
 What is meant by the " threefold and fourfold and manifold " 
 rewriting of the Gospel, attributed to " some of the believers," 8 
 he professes not to understand. He knows only of heretics 
 who have altered the Gospels, and this is a reproach not to the 
 Word but to the falsifiers. True Christianity is no more to be 
 blamed on account of those who have perverted it than philo- 
 sophy on account of the Sophists or the Epicureans or the 
 Peripatetics, 4 or any who may hold false opinions. But, as 
 has been pointed out, 5 the phrase T/-xri Kai ^Tpaxr evidently 
 indicates a distinction between the first three canonical 
 Gospels and the fourth. In this notable passage, all are 
 treated by the Jew as late writings derived from a more and 
 not less apparently fabulous beginning, and even as having for 
 their aim to make the story less open to hostile criticism than 
 it was at first. 
 
 The Jew dwells on the slightness of the supposed prophetic 
 tokens by which it is thought to be established that Jesus was 
 God and the Son of God. The Son of God ought to have 
 manifested himself by some clear light, like the light of the 
 sun, first showing forth himself and then illumining all other 
 things. 6 For once, Origen lays hold of a real causal relation ; 
 which he proceeds to invert into a proof that Christianity must 
 have been supernaturally revealed. There was such a mani- 
 festation, he replies, for a peace-preserving world-empire was 
 
 1 ii. 13. 2 ii. 16. 
 
 3 ii. 27 : Ttvay rCiv iriffrev&vruv , . . ws K utOijS TJKovras et's TO 4<f>fo~rdvai avrots 
 Hfra.-xo.p6.Trav K TTJS irpurrjs ypatprjs TO evayyt\iov Tpixrj Kal rerpaxy Kal 
 l fj.frair\drreiv, iV ix ote >' irpbs rovs Aeyx ol;J dpve'urdai. 
 
 4 At this period Aristotle was so far from being the idol of the Church 
 that he was not even included among the relatively orthodox philosophers. 
 
 5 See the opening of the article on "Gospels" in the Encyclopedia 
 Biblica. 
 
 H ii. 30 : Oeov Sf Kal Oeov vlov ovdeis IK roiovruv ffv/j.^6\uv Kal irapaKovff/j.d- 
 Ttav ovS 1 i oprwj dyevvuv reKfj.rjpiti>v ffvvLffrrjffiv. . . . tltsyap 6 7/Xtos, <t>i)(ri, irdvra 
 rci a\\a <f>wTluv irpGrrov airrbv StiKvvfi, oin-ws txPW TrfiroirjKtrai rbv vlbv 
 TOU Oeov.
 
 72 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 
 
 the necessary condition if the way was not to be barred to the 
 universal preaching of a mild doctrine that did not even per- 
 mit self-defence against enemies : accordingly the Roman 
 peace under a monarch had been established by Augustus, in 
 whose reign Jesus was born. 
 
 To several things that the Jew is made to say, he objects 
 that they are not in character. A Jew would not have assented 
 to the Christian position that the Son of God is the Word. 1 
 He would not have been likely to quote the Baccha of 
 Euripides. 2 To the objection, however, that the governor 
 who condemned Jesus suffered no punishment such as befell 
 Pentheus when he had imprisoned a Deity, Origen replies that 
 Pilate was not so much to blame as the Jewish race; 
 which, by the judgment of God, has been rent and scattered 
 over the whole earth worse than Pentheus. 8 
 
 The recurrent argument against the divinity of Christ from 
 his sufferings and death is met by the reply that those were 
 necessarily related to the end of his coming. To try to get rid 
 of a real crucifixion, with the succeeding death and burial, is 
 to deny the postulate of the Christian system. This, of course, 
 was precisely what opponents did deny. 
 
 Celsus, in the person of the Jew, points out the inconsis- 
 tency of the appeal to miracles in proof of one doctrine with 
 the condemnation of them when they are used to prove 
 another. 4 Origen can only appeal to ultimate success; re- 
 marking that that which causes men to lead better lives cannot 
 be deception. 5 If the claims of rival propagandists in the 
 Empire are ever referred to, it is assumed that these can have 
 nothing to say for themselves ethically. The existence of false 
 miracles worked by magic power, he goes on to argue, proves 
 that there must be true ones worked by divine power. To 
 
 1 11. 3 1 - 
 
 * ii. 34 : ob ir&vv fikv ofiv 'lovScuoi TCI. EXX^vwi' <j>i\o\oyovffiv. Origen 
 might have remembered Philo, to whom he refers elsewhere as remarkable 
 for Hellenic learning ; but by the third century, through the intensification 
 of sectarian divisions, the Jews had no doubt closed themselves in more. 
 
 3 ii. 34 : Strep KaradedtKaffrai V7rt> 6eov ffirapa.'xO^v KCU. els iraaav TTJV 
 v Ilevdtus (nrapayfibv Si.a,criraplv. 
 
 4 ii. 49 : irus of>v ov cr^rXtoj' airb T&V avrwv Hpyuv rbv fjv 6tbv TOI)J 
 )Tas iiy 
 
 ii. SO.
 
 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 73 
 
 infer from the former the non-existence of the latter is as if 
 one were to infer from the existence of a sophistical dialectic 
 the non-existence of a dialectic leading to truth. 1 Then he 
 shows that for a Jew to adopt the line of argument ascribed to 
 him by Celsus would lead to rejection of the prodigies recorded 
 in his own sacred books equally with those recorded in the 
 gospels. Moses, as well as Jesus, gives warnings against 
 being led astray by the miracles of prophets who shall teach 
 another doctrine. 2 
 
 A very stringent criticism of the resurrection story in the 
 Gospels is quoted, in which it is compared to similar stories 
 among Scythians and Egyptians and Greeks. " Or do you 
 think that the relations of the others both are and appear 
 fables, but that with you the catastrophe of the drama has been 
 devised becomingly or persuasively ? " 8 As this is assigned to 
 the Jew, Origen replies again by putting him on the defensive. 
 What plausibility is there in the statement of Moses that he 
 alone drew near to God, while the rest of the people stood 
 afar off? The Jew cannot apologise for what Moses relates 
 of himself without at the same time involuntarily apologising 
 for what is related of Jesus. The cases of the Greek and other 
 heroes, cited by the Jew but not appropriate in his mouth, are 
 not comparable to that of Jesus. They indeed could with- 
 draw themselves from men's eyes and then, when they re- 
 turned, feign that they had been in Hades. Jesus could not, 
 since he died publicly on the cross. And his disciples would 
 not have faced danger and death in order to bear witness to a 
 resurrection of which they had fabricated the account. 
 
 A Jew could not consistently question whether it was 
 possible for one who had really died to rise up with the same 
 body ; for he would have remembered the children whom 
 Elijah and Elisha brought back to life. " And I think that 
 for this cause also Jesus dwelt with no other nation than the 
 Jews, accustomed as they had become to marvels ; so that 
 by setting the things they held in belief side by side with the 
 things that had come to pass by him and were narrated about 
 him, they might receive it as true that he who had been the 
 centre of greater events and by whom more marvellous deeds 
 had been accomplished was greater than all those of old." 4 
 
 1 ii. 51. 
 
 2 ii. 53. Origen, it is perhaps worth noting, takes for granted (c. 54) 
 that Moses wrote the account of his own death in Deut. xxxiv. 
 
 *. 55- 4 - 57.
 
 74 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 
 
 Some of the objections Origen admits to be well taken and 
 not altogether easy to dispose of. But, he says, the notion of 
 an illusory appearance might account for a dream (6vap), but 
 not for a waking vision (Cirap), except in the case of madness or 
 melancholy. Celsus indeed, in an allusion to Mary Magdalene 
 (ywri irdpoiffrpos), insinuates that this might be the cause ; but the 
 written history does not prove it, and he has only this to go 
 upon. 1 
 
 If, it is said, Jesus really willed to show forth divine power, 
 he ought to have been seen after his resurrection by those that 
 had treated him despitefully, and by him who had condemned 
 him, and in short by all. 2 Origen replies that Jesus after his 
 resurrection appeared cnly to his disciples, and to them only 
 at intervals, because only to the few who were spiritually pre- 
 pared, and to them not always, could the vision of his glorified 
 body be revealed. The revelation was given to such as could 
 comprehend it. 
 
 To the question, " What God becoming present to men 
 meets with disbelief ? " 8 Origen replies that, in spite of all the 
 miracles they had seen performed in Egypt and in the wilder- 
 ness, the Jews themselves disbelieved and fell into idolatry. 
 Thus, with their conduct as recorded in the Old Testament the 
 behaviour of their descendants in rejecting Jesus was quite 
 consistent. 
 
 Jesus, the objector urges, being unable to persuade, uses 
 threats and denunciations. 4 So also, replies Origen, does the 
 God of the Old Testament, and even divine powers among the 
 Greeks. The Sirens persuade with flattery and pleasant 
 words. 
 
 Leaving the personification, Celsus now states it as his own 
 opinion that nothing can be idler than the contest between the 
 Jews and the Christians about the Messiah. 5 The Christians, 
 he maintains, were in the beginning simply a faction of the 
 Jews as the Jews were of the Egyptians. 6 Here of course he has 
 adopted, like Tacitus earlier, the inventions put forward by the 
 Egyptian annalists to give a different turn to the legend of the 
 exodus. On this ethnological point Origen, who knew Hebrew, 
 is able to furnish, here and elsewhere, a satisfactory refutation. 
 
 1 ii. 60. 2 ii. 63. 
 
 ii. 74 ' T^ 0ebs irapuv et'y avdpwirovs dTrtcrretrat ; 
 
 4 ii. 76. s iii. I. 6 iii. 5.
 
 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 75 
 
 The Jews, he proves as far as it can be proved by the test of 
 language, belong to an ancient and distinct ethnical group. 
 
 The Christians, says Celsus, few in number and united at 
 the beginning, now that they are many are split up into sects. 1 
 Origen replies, first, that divisions had already appeared in the 
 apostolic times, as is proved by the documents. Then he re- 
 marks, with some liberality, that differences of opinion only 
 manifest themselves about things of high value ; 2 citing the 
 case's of medicine and of philosophy. Unfortunately, the tolera- 
 tion seemingly indicated in this passage was really of a very 
 limited kind ; as is evident from the tone towards both 
 philosophy and "heresy" in passages where Origen speaks 
 more conformably to the general spirit of the Church. 
 
 We now come to a very interesting group of statements by 
 Celsus which, if examined closely, may reveal a rather complex 
 ritual as the hidden core of the earliest Church-life. He 
 speaks successively of "fabricated terrors," 8 and of "highly 
 superstitious worships abounding in mysteries." 4 Further, 
 he is described as "likening the inner and mystic things of 
 the Church of God to the cats or apes or crocodiles or he- 
 goats or dogs of the Egyptians." 5 And this, as is shown by 
 another citation, had some kind of reference to the " relations 
 about Jesus." 6 Origen professes not to know what is meant ; 
 asking what there is of all this in the doctrine of future 
 rewards and punishments, which Celsus also desires should be 
 preserved, or in the Gospel story (which perhaps he means) 
 of Christ crucified. The ground, of course, is uncertain ; but 
 does it not seem as if we are here brought into contact with 
 the Mystery Play which has been conjectured to underlie the 
 story in its present form ? We might even be tempted to infer 
 from a later passage, comparing the Christians to those who 
 
 1 iii. 10. 
 
 2 iii. 12 : ovSev&s irpdy/jLaTos, o5 nty <nrovSaia tffrlv i) dpxh * tt ' T V P^V 
 Xpij<n/ios, yeydvaffiv aiptfffis id<popoi. 
 
 3 iii. 16 : Seifj-ara <rvfjiirir\a.fffj.^va. 
 
 4 iii. 17 : OpriffKeia.1, fj.d\a 5fiffiSai/j.ovfS Kal /twmjpiwTiSes. 
 
 5 iii. 21 : 6/J.oiovvros TO. tvSov Kal /ii/<m/c<i TTJS ^KK\t]ffias rov 6eov rots 
 AtyvTrriuv atXovpois T) iridriKOis rj KpOKodei\ois ff rpdyois ff KVffiv. 
 
 6 iii. 19 : fUTi6eis 5'efaai fj.ij5kv ffffivdrtpov rpdyuv Kal KVVUV rCiv trap' 
 A-lyvirrtois flffdyovras v rais irepi rov 'Iijffov
 
 76 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 
 
 bring forward terrifying apparitions in the Bacchic mysteries, 1 
 that the drama in its original form included a representation 
 of the descent into Hades. The comparison which Celsus 
 makes with the eclectic cult which in Egypt had gathered 
 round the name and fate of Antinous 2 tends to confirm some 
 such theory. As, however, Church organisers had long been 
 engaged in systematically regulating the rites and removing 
 scandals, we must not expect to get a very clear vision of the 
 earliest cult. Into the process of regulation the first Epistle 
 to the Corinthians gives some insight. 
 
 In what Celsus says about men who have become gods 
 among the Greeks, Origen finds an artful ambiguity : he would 
 have liked him to say clearly what is his own opinion about 
 the divinity of the Dioscuri. 3 With Celsus, however, the stress 
 of the argument is on the more recently recorded cases of men 
 who have gained a reputation for some supernatural power ; 
 who have even been reported divine ; and for all that have not 
 become, or have not long remained, the object of a cult. The 
 story, for example, is quoted from Herodotus (iv. 14, 15), that 
 Aristeas of Proconnesus, who mysteriously disappeared from 
 among men and afterwards reappeared, was declared to the 
 Metapontines by Apollo's oracle to be a proper object of 
 worship : and yet no one now thinks him a god. 4 This seems 
 to Origen an evidence by contrast, of the power of Jesus. He 
 has been accepted by multitudes as divine, although the 
 demons whose power he came to destroy, instead of announc- 
 ing him as a god, stirred up their votaries against him. 6 
 Then, after referring to some more cases mentioned by 
 Celsus, he can only suggest that " certain evil demons " brought 
 it about that such stories should be written, in order that the 
 things prophesied about Jesus and spoken by him should 
 either be classed as inventions like the rest, or, not being 
 regarded as pre-eminent, should be in no way admired. 6 
 
 1 iv. IO : 2%0/j.oioi 71/j.as ro?s iv rats Ba\'X"f ats reXeratj TO, 0a0yiara KCU ra 
 
 Sfi/JLOLTCL TTpOeiffd.yOVffl. 
 2iii. 3 6. 
 
 8 iii. 22. 
 
 4 iii. 26 : TOVTOV ovSels (n vofj-i^ei 6f6v. 
 
 5 iii. 29. Pagan oracles, however, came to be quoted as testifying to 
 Jesus. 
 
 6 iii. 32.
 
 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 77 
 
 After some more reference to the oracles, he formulates the 
 alternative. Either Celsus sees nothing divine or daemonic in 
 prophets like Amphiaraus, who are said to have been raised 
 from the dead to the rank of gods, in which case he dissents 
 from the religion of the Greeks and is a confessed Epicurean ; 
 or he has no right to reject what is related of Jesus on no worse 
 evidence. If he accepts it, he will be obliged to go further 
 and admit that Jesus is more powerful; since none of the 
 others forbids honour to the rest, whereas Jesus condemns all 
 of them as evil demons. 1 
 
 Although, for the reasons already indicated, he could not 
 explain it, we see that it struck Celsus as a paradox needing 
 explanation, that among the Christians a man who had 
 actually lived and died should have come to be worshipped 
 as a great god, or even as God himself. In speaking of the 
 cult of Antinous, he says that the Egyptians would not endure 
 to hear him called a god in the same sense as Apollo or Zeus.' 2 
 This Origen, without reason given, declares to be false. The 
 ceremonial he finds to be merely a case of the usual deceiving 
 mysteries of the Egyptians, brought into relation with a 
 particular person. 3 Of course for Celsus this was the very 
 point of the comparison. The only moral he could draw from 
 it was that the Christians were more credulous than other men 
 in raising a human being to the height of divinity. 4 Yet this 
 cannot altogether have satisfied him, for he never ceases to 
 express his astonishment at such exalted deification of a man 
 recently dead. With the phenomena he saw around him, he 
 would have had no difficulty in understanding the rise of a 
 minor cult. 
 
 After some remarks on the relation between faith and 
 
 Mil. 35. Origen himself appears to be ashamed of this argument: 
 irpos rbv OVK old' STTWS rotavTa \tyovra roiavrd nva 
 
 -iii. 37 : K&V irapa.pd.\r]s avrf rbv '\ir6\\wva. ^ rbv A/a, oik di 
 3 iii. 36. 
 
 4 This was reinforced afterwards by Hierocles with new illustration from 
 the Life of Apollonius. 
 
 5 A curious point in Origen's demonology may be noted in passing. He 
 tells us (c. 37), as part of the higher knowledge of "esoteric Christians, 
 that, as there are many men who think they possess truth in philosophy, 
 so there are among separated souls and angels and demons, some that are 
 falsely persuaded they are gods.
 
 78 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 
 
 prejudice, he went on to accuse the Christians of appealing in 
 public only to the ignorant and servile, 1 and of underhand 
 proselytising among boys and weak women. 2 Of their secret 
 propaganda in households he gives a graphic account. They 
 tell youths not to regard their parents or lawful instructors, but 
 to listen only to them. If the father or teacher or any person 
 of knowledge comes on the scene, their reduction to silence or 
 whispering contrasts with their volubility in corners where there 
 is no one to oppose them. Thereupon they will lead off the 
 children with their playmates to some conventicle, promising 
 to give them perfect instruction ; and in this way they succeed 
 in persuading them. 
 
 Origen affects to treat all this as abuse. So far as public 
 appeals are concerned, the philosophers would be glad to draw 
 such multitudes together if they could. Some of the Cynics 
 have attempted something of the kind, and when it is a question 
 of teaching philosophy, instead of Christianity, to ignorant 
 popular audiences, Celsus and his like have no objection to 
 raise, but consider the attempt philanthropic. 3 Far from 
 being peculiarly indiscriminate in their appeals, the Christians 
 put those who are willing to hear them through a preliminary 
 examination, and exercise strict discipline over them after- 
 wards/ The deeper parts of their doctrine they reserve for 
 those who have made progress. 5 Why should they be blamed 
 for appealing to slaves ? The philosophers pride themselves 
 on having turned slaves as well as others to the virtuous life. 
 Is that permissible to " you, O Greeks," 6 while " we," the 
 Christians, are to have no credit for our philanthropy ? In 
 private, Christian propagandists have no wish to draw away 
 pupils from grave preceptors or studies. 7 To the complaint 
 that they will not speak out in the presence of the fathers of 
 boys whom they are trying to proselytise, Origen replies 
 
 1 iii. 50. Cf. 18 : Trdvra /J.tv ffo<pbv dire\a.w6vTUV TOV \6yov rrjs 
 avr&v (ibvovs 5t dvorfrovs KO.I di>5pairod(>}5ei.s KoXovvrwv, 
 
 2 iii. 55- 
 
 3 iii. 50. 
 4 iii. 51. 
 
 5 iii. 52. 
 
 6 " Greek " here, as so often, means an adherent of philosophic culture or 
 *' Hellenism." Origen is himself described as a Greek by race.
 
 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 79 
 
 that they are only too glad to open themselves before elders 
 who are serious-minded. 1 Would not philosophers similarly 
 mask themselves before the frivolous ? 
 
 Celsus expresses himself as willing to apologise if he has 
 said anything too harsh ; but, to show that he has spoken 
 under compulsion of the truth, he proceeds to quote the 
 calls to every one who is sinful, unwise, and so forth, to come 
 and be received into the kingdom of God. Does not the 
 "sinful" mean the unjust, the thief, the poisoner? What 
 different class would a robber call to his company ? In the 
 other mysteries, the call is to those only who are pure of hand 
 and just and of good conscience. 2 Origen does not here 
 venture to make explicit his usual assumption that the ethical 
 element was absent from all cults except the Christian, but 
 replies by distinguishing between the general multitude whom 
 the Christians receive to make them better, and those who are 
 admitted to the peculiar mysteries of the religion. These are 
 reserved for the just and pure not less but more rigorously 
 than any other mysteries. 
 
 We are told, continues Celsus, that God will receive the 
 unjust man who humbles himself through baseness ; but the 
 just man who has practised virtue and looked up to him from 
 the beginning he will not receive. When he is represented 
 as having to be moved by loud lamentations over past mis- 
 deeds, he is made to judge not in response to truth but to 
 flattery. Origen of course meets this by asserting the impos- 
 sibility of sinlessness for man ; but here he does no more than 
 restate in Pauline language a concession made by Celsus in 
 words perhaps cited by him from the Book of Job (xv. 14, xxv. 
 4). 8 Celsus explains his meaning more fully by the observa- 
 tion that to change the nature completely is very difficult, and 
 that those who (in an ordinary sense) are free from fault, are 
 better for the fellowship of life. 4 And Origen is in the end 
 obliged to admit that he may have represented the faith of the less 
 rational Christians correctly in saying that they regard God as 
 
 1 iii 58. 2 Hi. 59. 
 
 3 iii. 63 : TOVTO ptv eTriet/cws dX?j{?^s, STL irttpvKt TTWJ rb avOpumvov <f>v\ov 
 afj.apra.veiv. The equivalent, however, is to be found in Isocrates, 898 : 
 dXXd yap airavres TrXetw Tre<pvKa/J.ev ta/j.apTaveiv i) Karop6ovv. 
 
 4 iii. 65: <}>6ffiv yap d/tetycu reX^wj ira'Yx6.\firov ' ol 5' dyo 
 /SeXrt'ovs Koivuvol j3iou.
 
 8o CELSUS AND ORIGEN 
 
 an unjust judge who lets off the bad if they bewail themselves 
 and appeal to his pity, and rejects the good if they do not. 1 
 
 The charge of hostility to knowledge is one of those to which 
 Celsus constantly returns. The Christians, he says, teach 
 directly that "knowledge is an evil." 2 The wise, in their view, 
 turn away from their doctrines deceived by wisdom. 3 He 
 brings all this to a head by declaring that they thus insult the 
 God of the universe " to the end that they may lead worthless 
 men astray by light hopes and persuade them to despise the 
 things that are better." 4 Origen replies by a distinction 
 between true and false wisdom. None who have true wisdom 
 reject Christianity when explained by a competent instructor. 
 Any philosophy that leads men to reject it must be false.' 3 
 A little later, he attacks all the four recognised philosophic 
 schools, the Epicureans, the Peripatetics and the Stoics by 
 name, and the Platonists by implication. 6 Are any of these 
 the skilled physicians from attention to whom Celsus accuses 
 the Christians of withdrawing ignorant minds ? The Platonists 
 Origen does not care to condemn by name, because he is 
 engaged in adapting their doctrine of immortality to Christian 
 teaching. With those who teach the permanence of the soul, 
 he says, we have some things in common. He reserves for a 
 more suitable occasion the proof that the blessed life to come 
 will be only for those who accept the religion of Jesus and 
 allow no regard for generated things to contaminate the purity 
 of their theism. 7 By this contamination he means the per- 
 mission of statues; in which, as he maintains elsewhere, all 
 the philosophic schools alike have rendered themselves 
 accomplices with the crowd, thus falling under the guilt of 
 idolatry. 
 
 Having finished three books, the apologist at length begins 
 to be conscious of the seriousness of his task, and, at the 
 opening of the fourth, invokes divine assistance. What he 
 has to deal with now is a concentrated attack on the idea of 
 a special revelation to a particular people or to their self- 
 constituted successors. The refutation, Celsus holds, of those 
 
 Mii. 71. 2 iii. 75- 3 i- T 2 - 
 
 5 iii. T2. 6 iii. 75. 
 
 7 iii. 8l: irp6s o5s Koivd TWO. tx VT 
 Xowa fia.Ka.pia. fwr; /x6votj &rrai rots [TTJC] Kara. TOV 'Iijcrow QfOfftfifiav /ecu etj rov 
 ruv 5\uv 8-ii/j.i.ovpybv etWjSeicu' eiXiKptvij Kal Kadapav /ecu S./MKTOV irpbs 8n TTOT'
 
 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 81 
 
 Jews or Christians who say that some God or Son of God has 
 come down or is to come down to earth as a corrector of 
 things here, does not need a long discourse. 1 Origen finds 
 that the defence needs one of some length. 
 
 Does God, the claimants of authority from the revealer are 
 asked, come down to learn what is going on among men, as if 
 he did not know all ? Or does he know, and yet not set 
 things right, because he cannot do this by his divine power, 
 without sending a deputy? Or does he leave his own seat 
 because, being unknown among men and feeling himself 
 neglected, he wishes to make trial of those who believe and 
 those who do not, like the newly-rich exhibiting themselves in 
 their grandeur? To say so is to lay to his charge a stock of 
 very paltry desire for signs of honour. 2 Or, if they say that 
 the coming down is for the salvation of men, how is it that 
 God first thought of correcting human life after so long a 
 period of negligence ? 8 
 
 The question why God does not set human affairs right if 
 he knows them, replies Origen, may be retorted on Celsus if he 
 is a believer in providence. 4 In our view, God's method of 
 working is to be always sending those whose office it is to 
 introduce corrections. Of old the revelation how he is to be 
 served was committed pre-eminently to Moses and the 
 prophets. Now Jesus has come, not to be the Saviour merely 
 of those in " one corner " of the world, but so far as depends 
 on him ( T i> foov ^ir' ai/n?), of all men everywhere. 5 One reason 
 for divine revelation is that unbelievers may have no excuse. 6 
 It was not delayed : there were friends of God and prophets in 
 every generation. 7 A particular race no doubt was preferred : 
 " the Lord's portion is his people ; Jacob is the lot of his 
 inheritance " (Deut. xxxii. 9). But this, the preparation for 
 the coming of Christ, is a mystery too profound for the 
 
 1 iv. 2 :" Sn Ka.1 ~X.piffTia.vCiv rives Ka.1 'lovSaioi, ol /JL 
 
 [\fyovfftv,] ol df; KdTa/3i7<re<r0cu et's TT)V yijv riva debv ^ Otov vlov rwv rrjde Sinaiu- 
 rrfv, rovr' afoxufTOV, Kal ou8t dtirat paKpov \6yov 6 t\ey\os. 
 
 2 iv. 6 : iroXXV [-yoCc] riva Kal irdvv 6vnrr]v <fn\orifj.lay TOV deov Ka.rafi.apT- 
 vpovffi. 
 
 3 iv. 7. 
 
 4 Celsus, we shall see, had a philosophical theory to meet this. 
 
 iv. 4. 
 6 iv. 6. 
 Mv. 7.
 
 82 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 
 
 popular hearing, 1 a matter for deep searching of Scripture 
 on the part of those who " philosophise." 2 The many, for 
 their part, must be content simply to put their trust in God 
 and the Saviour and his ipse dixit (avrfc t<f>a}. 
 
 The flood and the last judgment, Celsus contends, are fables 
 having their source in misunderstanding of what the Greeks 
 and others have told about deluges and conflagrations that 
 occur in concomitance with certain periodic states of the 
 universe. 8 " We," replies Origen, " attach neither the deluge 
 nor the conflagration of the world to cycles and periods of the 
 stars, but say that the cause of both alike is sin." 4 As for the 
 " coming down " of God, to which Celsus makes repeated 
 reference, this is figurative ; a reply which may serve also for 
 the mockery that, according to the Christians, " God will come 
 down bringing fire, like a torturer." 5 When God visits the 
 world, he comes to purge sin. The " refiner's fire " 
 (Mai. iii. 2) is a metaphor. 
 
 To the argument that God, being perfect and unchangeable, 
 cannot become of the nature of mortal man, Origen replies 
 first that the Scriptures say so too ; and then points out that, 
 according to the Christian doctrine, God the Word ceases not 
 to exist continually in the same perfection through having 
 taken upon him a human body and soul. 6 And yet this 
 assumption of a human body and soul is not merely apparent, 
 as Celsus argues that it must be, and therefore, as deceptive, 
 must be unworthy of God, 7 if the divine is not to become 
 of inferior nature. 8 Are "the Greeks," Origen asks in the 
 course of the argument, 9 to be allowed to interpret metaphori- 
 cally what is said of the tearing in pieces of Dionysus by the 
 Titans and his coming to life again, while the Christians are 
 not to be allowed to bring out the logical implications of their 
 own Scriptures ? 
 
 On the recriminations between the Jews and the Christians, 
 an extremly contemptuous passage of Celsus is preserved ; in 
 which he compares them to assemblies of bats or ants or frogs 
 or worms declaring that the God of the universe busies him- 
 self solely with them and their affairs, that they rank next to 
 him, and that all things earth and water and air and stars 
 have been subjected to them. 10 And the worms that is, 
 
 a iv. 8. 2 iv. 9. 3 iv. ii. 4 iv. 12. 
 
 5 iv. 13 : 6'n 6 de&s Kara^fferai. 5lKrjv pa.<Tavi<TTov irvp <j>^p<i)v. 
 
 6 iv. 15. 7 iv. 18 : 8 iv. 19. 9 iv. 17. 10 iv. 23.
 
 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 83 
 
 says Origen, " we," are made to say : " Now, since some 
 among us offend, God will come, or will send his Son, that he 
 may burn up the unjust and that the rest of us may have 
 eternal life with him." These things, Celsus added, would be 
 " more tolerable from worms and frogs than from Jews and 
 Christians quarrelling with one another ; " meaning evidently 
 that the arrogant claim to be exclusive objects of divine care 
 is less worthy of rational than irrational animals. 
 
 For Origen, the question is settled in advance by the des- 
 truction of Jerusalem and the ruin of the "race of all Jews," 
 at the end of " one whole generation," after what Jesus had 
 suffered at their hands. If any one wishes to refute the 
 assertion that they did thus draw upon themselves the wrath 
 of God, let him show it to be false that they are now in this 
 condition. 1 The fact that the piety of Christian believers is 
 so steadfast as not to be overcome by the persuasiveness of 
 rational arguments, ought, Origen thinks, to contribute to the 
 proof that they are not to be compared to worms. 2 The 
 comparison which, however, he will not imitate Celsus by 
 making would apply better to the philosophers who try to 
 contemplate the nature of the universe and of the soul without 
 divine revelation. 3 
 
 Though insisting that the Jews are now for ever rejected 
 from divine favour, Origen has still to contend for the illus- 
 trious character of their race. One evidence is that there was 
 no painter or sculptor in their State 4 : so rigorous were they 
 in rejecting idolatry. That they were not merely fabling for 
 themselves an illustrious ancestry in tracing back their pedigree 
 to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, he tries to show by appeal to 
 the fact that these names conjoined with the name of God, 
 are used in prayers and exorcisms not only by members of the 
 nation but by those in general who occupy themselves with 
 enchantments and magic. 5 This was no doubt the fact on 
 
 1 iv. 22. 
 
 2 iv. 26 : i) TijXtKoi/T?? etiffefieia, 000' virb irfivuv otiO' viri> Kivdtivov Oavdrov 
 ovQ' virb \oyiKCiv iridavor^Tuv viKU^vrj. 
 
 3 iv. 30. 
 
 4 iv. 31 : otfre yap fwy/xi^os otfr' dyaXfj-aroiroibs ev rrj Tro\iTfla avrCiv J]v. 
 
 5 iv. 33 : Siv TOffovrov Svvarai TO, 6v6/j.ara ffwairrbiJieva. TTJ rov 6eov 
 irpoff-riyopla, uis ov fi6vov TOI>J awb rov Hdvovs xPV ff ^ ai tv rats irpbs Oebv e^x a 'S 
 KO.I tv rip Ka.Teirq.5eii> Sai/j-ovas ry 6 0ebs 'Afipaafj. KO.I 6 6ebs 'Icrad/c KO.I 6 Oebs 
 'IaKW/3 dXXd yap axeSo? /cai irdvTas roi)s TO. TUV e'lryd&i' Kal fj.ayeiHn>
 
 84 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 
 
 which Celsus relied in maintaining, as he seems to have done, 
 that the names were those of certain deceivers of old who were 
 in great repute for their arts, and from whom, therefore the 
 people desired to trace its descent. Origen takes the same 
 fact as a proof of the holiness of the ancient men whose names 
 were thus used. In the eyes of modern comparative 
 mythologists, it will tend to confirm the theory that the names 
 were at first those of ancient gods of the Semitic race, and that 
 only later did they become those of its heroes and ancestors. 
 A similar, though not quite identical, conclusion is suggested 
 by what Origen tells us about the use of the angelic names 
 Michael, Gabriel and Raphael, and, it may be added, of the 
 name of Jesus. All were at first names of gods; and how 
 much of the supernatural character remained, or how much 
 could be restored, depended on obscure circumstances only 
 traceable in an imperfectly preserved literary tradition. 
 
 Celsus went on to describe the stories in Genesis of the 
 fashioning of man by God from the earth, and of his fall, 
 as clumsily put together by the Jews in a corner of Palestine, 
 where they had never heard that these things had been sung 
 long ago by Hesiod and innumerable other inspired men. 1 
 This gives Origen an opportunity to make one of his 
 rhetorical points. Can it really be the Epicurean Celsus who 
 calls the poets " inspired men " (fospas tvQtow) ? Such mytho- 
 logisers as Homer and Hesiod, the Christian Father holds, 
 were rightly expelled by Plato from his ideal State ; but of 
 course Celsus is a better judge than Plato ! a The account in 
 Genesis, he proceeds, is maliciously turned into ridicule by 
 Celsus, who does not even consider the possibility of an alle- 
 gorical interpretation, though in the sequel he says that the 
 more reasonable-minded Jews and Christians try to allegorise 
 things they are ashamed of. 8 Then, provoked by the refer- 
 ence to the formation of woman out of a rib of the first man, 
 he quotes from the Works and Days the account of the 
 fashioning of Pandora by Hephaestus at the command of 
 Zeus. And this ridiculous myth, he exclaims, is to be treated 
 as a philosophical allegory ! So also, it seems, are the stories 
 
 1 iv. 36. 
 
 2 The Hellenic Platonists respectfully dissented from their master on this 
 point. 
 
 3 iv. 38 : KO.ITOI. ye 4v rots ei-fjs \tyuv on ol eiritiKfortpot 'lovdaiuv re nai 
 Xpi<rTi.a.vwv iwl Tot/rots o.la"x.vv6fj.voi iripi>Ta.l TTWS dXX-tjyopelv aura.
 
 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 85 
 
 told by Egyptians and other barbarians. The right to allego- 
 rise is to be refused to none but those who interpret the Jewish 
 authors. 
 
 He then tries to show the allegorical nature of the occur- 
 rences in the Garden of Eden by comparing the Platonic myth 
 of the birth of Eros. This, he thinks, may have been borrowed 
 by Plato when he was in Egypt from those who knew something 
 of Judaism. He complains that the attack ignores the more 
 edifying things in Genesis. When, however, Celsus, referring 
 to the plot of Rebecca and Jacob against Esau, declares it 
 absurd that God should be represented as dwelling nearest to 
 such as these, Origen finds here no exception to the beauty 
 and strength which he sees in the recorded actions of the 
 friends of God. 1 If, as Celsus objects in the ancient spirit of 
 contempt for interested morality, God is made to reward the 
 just by abundantly satisfying their material needs, it is replied 
 that " all these things happened unto them for types : and 
 they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of 
 the world are come" (i Cor. x. n). On the story ("worse 
 than Thyestean," Celsus calls it) of Lot's daughters, Origen's 
 apology a might have served as a model for the most accom- 
 plished of the casuists satirised by Pascal. Naturally, he does 
 not spare a counter-attack on the Greek myths. Then he 
 returns to the question, Who has the best right to allegorise ? 
 Celsus maintains that the Jews and Christians have no such 
 right, their early records being mere foolish stories without 
 any deeper philosophical meaning. 8 It appears that he was 
 not judging without examination, but had looked into some of 
 the allegorising writers. " Their allegories," he says, " fit to- 
 gether, with a kind of amazing and absolutely tasteless folly, 
 things that can in no way be harmonised." 4 In passing, he 
 described a disputation between " one Papiscus and Jason " as 
 " worthy of pity and hate rather than of laughter." 8 This has 
 not come down to us ; but it is known to have been a popular 
 work in which the Christian view of the prophecies supposed 
 to refer to Christ was defended against the Jews. Origen 
 
 1 iv. 43 : HyxiffTO. d TOI/TOIS iraffi ffv/j.iro\'.rev6fjLevov et <pa/j.ev rbv 0e6v, rl 
 &TOTTOV wpa.ffffOfj.ev irei.B6p.fvoi /j,r)5 irore dQiffrdveiv rrjv eavrov 6fi6njra r&v 
 fj-erd. rov KaXcDj /cat tppu/dvui fiiovv avrif dvcucfi/j.tvuv ; Esau was a bad 
 character (cf. 46 : avSpbs Kara TTJV ypa<f>i)v 6/j.oXoyov/j^vov <pav\ov). In v. 
 59 Origen says that he knows only of a plot of Esau against Jacob, not of a 
 plot of Jacob against Esau. 
 
 2 iv. 45. 3 iv. 50. 4 iv. 51. 5 iv. 52.
 
 86 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 
 
 insists that "pity and hate" are incompatible feelings, but 
 allows that the book is not among the writings adapted to 
 move intelligent readers. He thinks that if Celsus had read 
 Philo with attention he would have thought better of his alle- 
 gorising method ; since there is much in Philo of Greek philc- 
 sophy. 
 
 Starting from the Tim ecus (like Julian afterwards) Celsus 
 proceeded to develop a philosophical view of creation as 
 against the Judaeo-Christian view. 1 Though Origen here finds 
 that nothing is to be made of the attempt to excite prejudice 
 against the " Epicurean," modern readers must be struck with 
 the bent towards scientific naturalism that went along with 
 the Platonism of Celsus. He seems to have opposed to the 
 idea of an original production of the various kinds of bodies by 
 successive acts of volition, the general philosophical conception 
 that it is of the essence of material things to be in an alternat- 
 ing flux so that particular bodies must be explained as 
 resultants of one uniform natural process, and not assigned 
 without further inquiry to the will of a maker. 2 " No offspring 
 of matter," that is, no particular material body, "is immortal." 3 
 The necessity of evil (as with Plato) results from the plunging 
 of souls into the flux. Since its primal source is always the 
 same, its total quantity can neither be increased nor diminished. 4 
 There are periodic movements of mortal things, but no mira- 
 calous catastrophes. 5 
 
 To part of this, Origen raises the objection that some evils 
 have been abolished while others have sprung up in human 
 history. 6 An obvious reply would have been that this illus- 
 trates the balance; but in any case the objection does not 
 touch the position of Celsus, who had spoken of the " evils in 
 things " (KUKO, tv rots ofoiv) regarded as portions of the whole. 
 He did not hold that human societies have always existed, 
 but, in a Lucretian spirit, traced man back to beginnings as a 
 mere animal. 7 " Without philosophising," Celsus had 
 remarked, "it is not easy to know whence evils are born." 
 " Nor yet is it easy if you do philosophise," retorts Origen, 
 "nor perhaps possible without divine inspiration." The 
 
 >iv. 54 ff. 
 60: 
 
 iraXi 
 
 ''iv. 6l. 4 iv. 62. 5 iv. 69. 6 iv. 63. 
 
 7 iv. 79. Origen tries to make an inconsistency out of this. 
 
 2 iv. 60 : Koivri TJ Travruv rwv irpoeipr/fitvuv ffUfj.oi.Tuv 0wris Kal fj.ia e'r 
 a/j.oi/3r)v ira\ivTpoTrov lovffa Kal tiraviovffa.
 
 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 87 
 
 greatest of evils is ignorance how God is to be served ; and 
 that some of the philosophers have been thus ignorant is 
 proved by the existence of different sects in philosophy. 
 According to the Christian view ( Ka e' ^Ss)> no one who does 
 not know that it is an evil to think that piety is preserved in 
 the established laws of what are commonly thought to be 
 States, has it in his power to know the source of evils. And 
 no one who has not an accurate knowledge regarding the 
 Devil and his angels and how he came to be the Devil has it 
 in his power to know the source of evils. 1 Evil in us has not 
 matter for its cause, but the choice made by our ruling 
 principle. 2 A periodic and necessitated cosmic movement, 
 like that which Celsus affirms, would take away our moral 
 responsibility ( T 6 e<j> ^'")- 8 
 
 Miraculous interpositions, which Celsus had protested 
 against as involving an anthropomorphic conception of Deity, 4 
 Origen defends as a kind of medicine periodically administered 
 by the Creator when the world is in need of it. That evils 
 are such only to individuals, and are part of the order of the 
 whole, he is able to admit in his own way. 5 The Scriptural 
 imagery about the " wrath of God," he defends as a mode of 
 speech adapted to human weakness. When Celsus, going more 
 into detail, argues against the view that all things were made for 
 man, Origen points out that he is in opposition to the Stoics, 
 and again affects to associate him with the Epicureans. 6 But 
 in fact it was especially by the Platonists that the opposition 
 to the narrow teleology of the Stoics was carried on. What 
 is given of the arguments of Celsus has much in common with 
 the treatment of the subject by Plutarch earlier and by 
 Porphyry later. He points to the signs in the lower animals 
 
 1 iv. 65. One implication is that the Devil and his angels founded " the 
 religion of the Gentiles." 
 
 2 Of course no one denied that moral evil is properly a wrong choice 
 made by the will or the person. The metaphysical question was, How is 
 this possible ? Platonic philosophers tried to solve it by the necessity of 
 " matter" as a principle of diremption, setting one thing (in a world like 
 ours) in rivalry with another. What Origen puts forward as a different 
 solution, is a mere restatement of the problem. 
 
 J iv. 67. 
 
 4 iv. 69 : d\X' ou5' ws &v6puiros TKrriva/j.fv6s TI evdews icai a 
 6e&s Trpoffdyfi Si6p6uffii> rip icfofup, K0.do.lpuv aiTbv Ka,Ta.K\vfffj.$ 
 
 iv. 70. 6 iv. 75.
 
 88 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 
 
 of an innate intelligence by which they rule their actions for 
 their own preservation, as against the view that they are 
 simply "irrational" and created only to be subservient to 
 man. With Origen it is a fixed dogma that no animal but 
 man can possess reason. If any seem to perform rational 
 actions, it is in them blind instinct of nature ; they are really 
 moved by a divine intelligence external to them. The 
 hexagonal cells in hives are part of an arrangement set in action 
 that bees may provide men with honey. 1 In referring to what 
 Celsus relates of the way in which ants help one another with 
 burdens, Origen comments to the effect that to represent ants 
 as having knowledge in doing this, will turn away people of 
 the simpler sort from giving the like mutual aid, because they 
 will no longer have the consciousness of a superiority as human 
 beings. 2 Remembering afterwards a well-known passage in 
 Proverbs (xxx. 24-28), he escapes from the necessity of 
 admitting that the animals mentioned are really " wise," by 
 treating proverbial, or "parabolic," 8 literature as consisting 
 essentially of " enigmas." " Wherefore also it is written in our 
 Gospels that our Saviour said : ' These things have I spoken 
 unto you in proverbs ' (or parables)." And here he thinks it 
 appropriate to quote the statement of Celsus that those who 
 allegorise the books of the Jews and Christians do violence to 
 the intention of the writers ; adding the triumphant declaration 
 that now it may be considered as confuted. 
 . That Celsus did not seriously found anything on what 
 he brought together about the divinatory powers of certain 
 animals, 4 Origen himself suspects. The argument that such 
 animals are in closer relation to the Deity than the men who 
 have to consult them in order to gain knowledge of the future, 
 looks like a final and rhetorical touch in a brief literary develop- 
 ment of the thesis, and does not seem intended to be taken 
 for more. At any rate, it gives Origen an opening for a long 
 disquisition, in the course of which he states it as the Christian 
 view that certain demons of the Titan or giant race, impious 
 and fallen from heaven, enter into the bodies of animals, 
 preferably birds or beasts of prey, and making them the vehicles 
 of their own fore-knowledge, lure mankind by this means from 
 the worship of the true God. 5 
 
 Mv. 82. 2 iv. 83. 
 
 fti^\lov Ha.poifj.lcu. 
 4 iv. 88. 5 iv. 92.
 
 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 89 
 
 The tone in which Celsus brings this portion of his argu- 
 ment to a close seems of itself to exclude the idea that he 
 attached any weight to his excursion into the lore of divination. 
 " Not therefore for man have all things been made, as neither 
 have they been made for the lion or the eagle or the dolphin ; 
 but that this world as a work of God should become complete 
 and perfect altogether. For the sake of this, have all things 
 had their measure assigned, not for the sake of one another 
 (except secondarily) but of the whole. And God cares for the 
 whole ; and this whole providence never forsakes ; nor 
 does it become worse ; nor does God after an interval turn it 
 back to himself; nor does he become angry on account of 
 men, any more than he becomes angry on account of apes or 
 mice. Neither does he threaten those beings of which each 
 in its particular order has received its allotted part." 1 
 
 Origen goes through this, point by point, agreeing or differ- 
 ing as his dogma requires. Then he concludes the fourth 
 book by again, as at the beginning, invoking divine assistance 
 for the continuance of the work. 
 
 At the opening of the fifth book, he observes that Celsus 
 in asserting as he does that no God or Son of God has ever 
 come down to men, 2 is in effect denying the popular mythology. 
 The philosophical resistance to the new faith was at a tactical 
 disadvantage here, and the Christian apologist can again 
 profess to discover traces of the impious " Epicurean." 
 
 Passing now from the nature of the supreme unity to the 
 graduation of beings in the universe, Celsus puts questions 
 skillfully directed to show that Christianity, and even Judaism, 
 implied in principle as much " polytheism " as the official 
 religion of the Grseco-Roman world. Of what nature, he asks, 
 are the " angels," spoken of by the Jews and Christians ? Are 
 they what others call gods, or are they " demons " ? 8 And 
 since the Jews revere the heaven and its angels, why do 
 they refuse all honour to the sun and moon and the other 
 stars ? * 
 
 To this Origen replies with a certain moderation. The angels 
 are sometimes called " gods " in the Scriptures, but they are 
 not therefore to be worshipped in place of the supreme God. 5 
 They are certainly not " demons," for this name is to be 
 understood only of evil powers acting without a gross body. 6 
 
 1 iv. 99. 2 v. 3. 3 v. 4. 4 v. 6. 
 
 5 v. 4. 6 v. 5.
 
 90 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 
 
 The Jews worship a God not merely above the parts of the 
 heaven, but above the whole heaven itself. As the chosen, 
 people of the Supreme, they were not allowed to worship any- 
 thing subordinate like the heavenly bodies, which were assigned 
 to "the nations" (Deut. iv. 19, 20. ) l Yet the sun and moon 
 and stars, as works of God, are often celebrated in the Scrip- 
 tures. Perhaps they are guided by higher intelligences. The 
 opinion of Anaxagoras, that the sun is merely a " red-hot mass,' r 
 does not commend itself to Origen. Like Philo, he has here 
 come under the influence of the later Hellenism. 
 
 Accordingly he does not, in replying to the attack of Celsus 
 on the " resurrection of the flesh," defend the literal sense of 
 the doctrine. This was held, he seems to allow, 2 by the 
 simple-minded believers ; but St. Paul, in what he said about 
 the " spiritual body," had indicated a truer view. Celsus, on 
 his part, distinguishes " some of the Christians " from those 
 whom he is attacking ; but on the believers who cherish the 
 " hope of earthworms," that after being long dead they are to- 
 rise up from the ground with the bodies they formerly had, 
 his attack is unsparing. What soul of a man would desire 
 a putrified body ? And how can a body, once decomposed, 
 return to its former state ? " Having nothing to answer, they 
 flee to a most absurd subterfuge, that everything is possible 
 to God. But God cannot do what is vile, nor does he will to- 
 do what is against nature . . . For he is the Reason of all 
 beings, and cannot do a work that is contrary to reason or to 
 himself." 3 Contemptuous as the phrases are, Origen does not 
 feel himself hurt by them. For in fact his own doctrine is 
 the immortality of the soul, contrasted by Celsus in the same 
 passage with that of a physical resurrection. The ideas of the 
 earliest believers have been left behind, and those of Greek 
 philosophy substituted, as they had begun to be in the Pauline 
 writings. With the heretics, however, who altogether deny 
 the Scriptural dogma of the resurrection, Origen will not make 
 common cause. There is to be a body, but it is to be 
 glorified. 4 And even a literal resurrection of the former 
 body, he retorts on Celsus, is in accordance with some 
 doctrines of the Greeks. The Stoics suppose that, after their 
 
 l v. 10. 2 v 19. 
 
 3 v. 14 : avrbs ydp ta-riv 6 irdvrwv rwv &VTUV \6yos ' ovStv ovv of<5j re irapd\o- 
 yov ovdt Trap' eavrbv 
 
 4 tr fyi
 
 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 91 
 
 world-conflagration (for they too have this), bodies exactly 
 like those that existed before will appear in the new cycle 
 without even the remains of these to grow from. And surely 
 this is more paradoxical than what is really held by Christians, 
 who suppose the new body to grow, not indeed from the old, 
 but from a \6-yos latent in it. 1 
 
 The Jews, Celsus proceeded, whatever one may think of 
 their religion, do at least agree with other men in practising a 
 form of worship which is that of their ancestors. This seems 
 expedient, not only inasmuch as they are preserving laws that 
 were arrived at by common consent in the particular country 
 where they are in force, but also because it is a reasonable view 
 that the different parts of the earth have been from the be- 
 ginning distributed among different powers. 2 Thus it is unholy 
 to dissolve what has been established by custom in each 
 place. 
 
 To this view Origen brings as an objection unholy customs, 
 such as incest and human sacrifice, sanctioned by various 
 religions. Are these to be preserved where they are estab- 
 lished? 3 Further, if religion is an affair of local custom, 
 must not the same principle be applied to the moral virtues ? * 
 Then he attempts a positive view. Celsus, in what he says on 
 the distribution of the parts of the earth among the gods of 
 the nations, has been misled by certain dim traditions " outside 
 the divine word." To learn the truth, we must go to 
 Deuteronomy (xxxii. 8, 9) and to the account in Genesis of 
 the tower of Babel. This indeed has a secret meaning not to 
 be divulged to the uninitiated, but a hint may be given. All 
 except one race wandered " from the East " (Gen. xi. 2), that 
 is, from the light of truth, and may be supposed to have been 
 placed as a punishment in various localities under the 
 government of inferior angels. The one race that was "the 
 Lord's portion" was not, indeed, exempt from shortcomings, 
 but for a time these were not irreparable. At length, this race 
 too having been completely scattered abroad for its sins, the 
 revelation of Jesus is come to all ; and, against a revelation 
 
 1 ? 23. 
 
 2 v. 25 : SoKel 8' OITUS Kal <rv/j.(/>tpeii>, ov /JLOVOV Kaffori eirl vovv ^\6ev dXXois 
 XXws vofj.lffai Kal del <j>v\dTTeu> TO. es Koivbv Ketcvpufjitva, dXXd Kal Sri wi 
 euds ra fjL^pt) TTJS 777$ ^ d-PXW &\\a dXXotj 4ir6irTais vfvcfj.rifi.fra. Kal Kara 
 rtvas tiriKparelas difi.Xtjfiu.^i'a Tavrrj Kal StoocetTcu. 
 
 3 v. 27. * v. 28.
 
 92 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 
 
 from the supreme God, the customs prevailing among the 
 dispersed portions of the human race under the penal dominion 
 of lower powers have naturally no right to exist. Accordingly, 
 when Celsus asks the Christians whence they in particular 
 derive their paternal laws, and tells them that they are merely 
 revolters from the Jews, Origen replies that now, " in the last 
 days," " the house of God, which is the Church of the living 
 God, the pillar and ground of the truth" (i Tim. iii. 15) is 
 " exalted above the hills " and that " all nations shall flow 
 unto it" (Isa. ii. 2). "And we say to those that ask us 
 whence we are come or what leader we have, that we come 
 according to the pledges of Jesus," from all nations, to beat 
 our swords into ploughshares and our spears into pruning- 
 hooks, " becoming through Jesus sons of peace." 1 
 
 Here are plainly to be seen the theocratic pretentions of the 
 " great Church " a as against the system of local liberties and 
 tolerance which Celsus was defending in terms of a " theologico- 
 political " theory elaborated to meet practical exigencies. It 
 did meet them on the whole, but it needed accommodation, 
 as Origen was able to show. For the empire did not recognise 
 every detail of religious custom as absolutely sacred. More 
 than a generation before the treatise against the Christians 
 was written, a decree of Hadrian had made all human 
 sacrifices illegal. And the local religions, while their privileges 
 generally were maintained, had no power of coercion over 
 individual dissentients who chose to neglect their rites. So, 
 when Celsus quotes the famous passage of Herodotus (ii. 18) 
 on the inviolableness of their own customary laws to each 
 people, Origen replies by asking what then is to be thought of 
 the teachings of the philosophers against superstition (*<"& 
 SeKTiSaifj.ovlas'). And if the right of those who philosophise to 
 desert paternal custom is recognised, how can that of the 
 Christians be denied ? Celsus and those who think with him, 
 were they serious in their appeal to custom, would have to lay 
 down the rule henceforth that those who in Egypt adopt the 
 opinions of the philosophers must continue to practise all the 
 abstinences from kinds of food and all the ritual of the 
 Egyptian religion. Any one who did this would be a queer 
 philosopher. 8 
 
 It seems to have been already perceived in the second 
 
 ^.33. 2 Cf. v. 40. 
 
 v. 35 : ye
 
 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 93 
 
 century that pleas of this form, urged on behalf of the Church, 
 were not really for liberty but for power. Thus Celsus, as if 
 by anticipation, had devoted the next portion of his argument 
 to invalidating the exclusive claims of the Christians (founded 
 on those of the Jews) by setting against them other claims that 
 seemed a priori no less valid. Then, at the end of the section, 
 he pointed out that those who arrogate a divine right of 
 dominance over the world cannot even agree among themselves 
 but differ more fiercely than other men. Origen's method of 
 reply is simply to reaffirm the claims ; but there is some 
 interest in observing how he does it. 
 
 The god Ammon, says Celsus, has no worse claim to 
 convey messages as to what is sacred than " the angels of the 
 Jews." 1 Ammon, replies Origen, may command abstinence 
 from the flesh of cows, and such a command may to a super- 
 ficial view appear on a level with similar prescriptions in the 
 Jewish law. If, however, Celsus had known the true meaning 
 of such legislation as that of Deut. xxv. 4, he would have 
 known that it is symbolical and refers to the relations of men 
 (cf. i Cor. ix. 9), and not to " irrational animals." 2 
 
 There is record in history, Celsus pointed out, of the 
 introduction of a new god, Serapis. s But the Son of God, 
 Origen replies to the intended parallel, if he came but recently 
 to dwell among men, is not therefore new ; for the Scriptures 
 have knowledge of him as the eldest of all creatures, by whom 
 man was made in the image of God. Serapis came in yesterday 
 or the day before by the deceit of Ptolemy, who wished to 
 show to the Alexandrians, as it were, a god manifest. * How 
 he was constructed, and what various things of nature he 
 participates in, we have read in Numenius the Pythagorean. 
 Then, as if unaware that he is himself displaying the parallel 
 
 *v. 36. 
 
 2 From a modern point of view this is an unfortunate example. Origen 
 had an opportunity of drawing attention to the humanity of the Jewish 
 legislation regarding animal life ; and the texts he could have quoted would 
 have met wLh recognition from a Pythagorean or a Flatonist. Yet, so far 
 is he from taking this line that he seems to go out of his way to enforce 
 the characteristic hardness of the new religion, faithfully preserved in the 
 authorised teaching of the Catholic Church as still expounded by its 
 philosophic theologians. 
 
 3 v. 37. 
 
 4 V. 38 : irepl St Zapd'TriSos TroXXrj (cat 5id<f>wvos Iffropia., X^ s Ka ^ "Kp&W '* 
 H^ffov tXOovTos Kara rivas fjutyyaveias rov fiovXrjOtvTOS IlToXe/xa/oii oiovd 
 ujcu rots
 
 94 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 
 
 syncretism, he goes on to set forth the all-comprehensive 
 attributes of the Son of God. 1 
 
 The Jews, Celsus concedes, are not to be blamed for 
 clinging to their own customs, but only for the claim they make 
 to be holier than other men. 2 Though Origen's reply here 
 repeats some positions given above, it contains one or two 
 details worth noting. If it is true, as Celsus maintains, that 
 neither the monotheism nor the rites of the Jews are their 
 peculiar property, we must still distinguish. The name by 
 which the Highest is called is not indifferent : for, as was 
 said before, names are something more than conventional 
 signs. This is especially the case with divine names. To 
 call upon " the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and 
 the God of Jacob " has an efficacy in controlling the demons 
 which would be entirely lost if one were to substitute in the 
 formula translations of the names of the patriarchs. So 
 likewise with the names of Israel, of Sabaoth, and of Adonai. 
 Zeus is not the same as Sabaoth : for his name is not divine at 
 all, but is that by which a certain demon pleases to be called 
 upon, who is not friendly to man nor to the true God. 3 
 Circumcision, though it cannot be denied to be common as a 
 rite to the Jews and to other nations, nevertheless differs 
 according as the doctrines of those who practise it differ. It 
 may have been performed because of some angel hostile to the 
 Jewish race, who was thus deprived of his power to injure. 4 
 When Jesus had undergone the rite, the angel's power against 
 the uncircumcised who worship only the Creator was altogether 
 destroyed, so that there was no further need to avert injury by 
 the shedding of blood. Kinds of abstinence, again, differ 
 according to the intention. If for example, Christian ascetics 
 abstain from the flesh of animals (though no longer 
 required to observe the distinctions of meats according to 
 Jewish law), this is in order to bring the body 
 into subjection, and not, as with the Pythagoreans, because 
 they think they are sparing their kindred. 5 
 
 Reference to the Jewish and Christian doctrine of angels led 
 
 l v. 39. 2 v. 41. 3 v. 46. 
 
 4 v. 48. Following a method already adopted by Hebrew interpreters 
 for getting rid of anthropomorphisms in the Bible, Origen substitutes an 
 "angel" for "the Lord" in the barbaric story of Ex. iv. 24-26. Celsus 
 would hardly have seen in this explanation a proof that the Jews and 
 Christians were exempt from demonolatry. 
 
 5 v. 49.
 
 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 95 
 
 again to an incidental criticism of the resurrection-narratives in 
 the Gospels. Origen begins an attempt at reconciliation of 
 discrepancies, but cuts short the reply by hinting at a mystical 
 significance of the number of angels at the tomb in the 
 different narratives. Equally strange stories, he proceeds, 1 are 
 told among the Greeks. 
 
 In noting the contradictory positions of the Christian sects, 
 Celsus brought in the speculations of the Gnostics ; though he 
 was aware of the exclusive pretentions of the " great Church," 
 with its acceptance of the God of the Jews as at once the 
 creator of the world and the highest God. It appears from 
 the account given that he knew of Christians who lived 
 according to the Jewish law, 2 as well as of the anti-Jewish 
 Gnostics. Origen repudiates some of the Gnostic sects 
 on the ground that they are not Christian at all. Of some he 
 declares that he has never come in contact with them. Here, 
 however, what Celsus was chiefly concerned to bring into view 
 was the unmeasured vituperation of one another by sects all of 
 which claimed to be Christian, and their deadly mutual hate. 3 
 Origen tries to palliate differences, as before, by comparing 
 with them the quarrels of philosophical and medical sects. 
 The hatred imputed he will not admit. To hate those that 
 have been led astray by heresies would be inconsistent with 
 the blessings pronounced in the Gospel on peacemakers and 
 on the meek. Celsus from his point of view had not failed to 
 observe the same contrast ; as may be seen from his trenchant 
 summing-up. " All those," he says, " who are so much at 
 variance and who in their wranglings confute one another 
 with the most shameful abuse, you will hear saying, 'The 
 world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.' " 4 Where- 
 upon the apologist exclaims in triumph that all cannot say this ; 
 for some of the heretics do not accept the Pauline epistles. 
 Now the passage cited is from Paul (Gal. vi. 14), and they 
 would not quote the Apostle whom they reject. 
 
 Though the beginning of the doctrine is naught, continues 
 
 1 v. 57- 
 
 2 v. 6l. Of these Origen writes : OVTOI S'tifflv ol Strrot 'E/Jtwycuoi, tfroi K 
 trapOevov b/AoXoyovvres 6jU.o/ws T)/JUV rbv 'Ii)<rovv 7} ovx ovrtii yeyei>vTJ<r6ai dXXA 
 ws TOI''S Xoi7roi)s avOpuirovs. 
 
 3 v. 63 : KOL j3\a<r<j>T]fj.ovo'i dt, <f>i)<riv, eis dXX-^Xcw oSrot iravSeiva pijTa Kal 
 appijTa ' Kal OVK av eii^aiev ovdt Ka.6' oriovv et'y 6/j.6voiav t iravrri a\\rj\ovs 
 diroffTvyovvres. 
 
 4 v. 64.
 
 96 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 
 
 Celsus in entering upon the next section of the argument, let 
 us examine the teaching itself. 1 Then he compares the 
 religious and moral precepts of Christianity with those of 
 philosophy, and finds that the same things have been said 
 better by the Greeks and without overstrain, or the assertion 
 that they were spoken by God or a son of God. 2 To this 
 Origen sets himself to reply in the sixth book ; remarking 
 first that he has no quarrel with the teachings adduced 
 from the philosophers, but that, excellent as they are in 
 themselves, they have the defect of not appealing to the mul- 
 titude. He is obliged to confess, however, that if Plato is read 
 only by students, Epictetus at any rate is in popular use. 3 
 
 Then the tone changes. It turns out that Plato's wisdom 
 became folly, according to what St. Paul said (Rom. i. 21-23) : 
 for the men who have written such things as Celsus quotes 
 about the "first good" go down to the Piraeus to offer up 
 prayer to Artemis and to gaze on a procession of the vulgar. 4 
 In the opening passage of the Republic, the Christian Father 
 can see nothing but a degrading compliance with popular 
 idolatry ; which was appropriately avenged when God chose 
 the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, " that no 
 flesh should glory before God" (i Cor. i. 27-29). The truth 
 that was in Plato did not profit even himself, for he thus 
 incurred the punishment of sinners. 5 
 
 Pursuing the argument, Celsus remarks that Plato, although 
 perceiving that the highest knowledge is accessible to but few, 
 does not talk in a portentous manner, and stop the mouths of 
 questioners, and straightway command the acceptance as of 
 faith that " such is God, and he has such and such a Son, and 
 this Son came down and conversed with me." 6 Apparently as 
 a proof that there was after all something portentous about the 
 philosophers, Origen thinks it relevant to quote various 
 marvels from their biographies ; again bringing forward the 
 story of Plato's virgin birth. Moreover, Plato himself, in one 
 of his epistles (Ep. vi. p. 323 D) has stated the doctrine of a 
 
 1 v. 65 ' <f>^p' oZv, el KO.I 
 !-er<i<r<i)fjLev rbv \6yov. 
 
 2 vi. 1. 3 vi. 2. 4 vi. 4. 
 
 5 vi. 5 Cf. 3 : Sta rovro Si Kal rovs TO. <i\i]0r] wepl 6eov viro\a/36i'Ta.s 
 fii] TTJV aia.i> ri)j irepl ai/roO aXrjdeias 6eo<rfpeiav 
 TCUS TUI> d/J.aprav6vT<ai>
 
 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 97 
 
 divine sonship ; speaking of the God of all as the Father of the 
 ruling principle and the cause. 
 
 In what Celsus had to say about faith, there occur in the 
 form of deductions from the Christian view, put as absurdities, 
 positions that have since been adopted seriously by the 
 bolder apologists. Because we say that the Son of God suf- 
 fered the most disgraceful punishment, "Believe all the more." 1 
 Again ; if one sect brings in one person, another another, and all 
 alike say, " Believe if you wish to be saved, or depart," what 
 shall they do who really wish to be saved ? Shall they decide 
 by throwing dice ? a The first challenge was accepted in the 
 paradox of Tertullian. 8 The second will at once suggest to 
 modern readers " the wager of Pascal : " Stake your eternal 
 happiness on the truth of that creed whose promises and 
 threats are the most transcendent. 
 
 The distinction between human and divine wisdom, observed 
 Celsus, is not new, but is to be met with in Heraclitus and 
 other philosophers. Then he points out that a fitting humility 
 in presence of the divine law is taught by Plato (Leges iv. 715 
 -716 A). This the Christians have distorted into a base 
 humility. 4 Plato had also said, before the Gospels, that no one 
 can be extremely rich and attain the height of goodness. 5 In 
 reference to the last point, it is interesting to note that accord- 
 ing to the spokesman of the Church the expressions " rich and 
 poor " in the Gospels are not to be understood literally. " For 
 not even the first man you meet would praise the poor indis- 
 criminately, of whom the most part have the very worst 
 morals." 6 
 
 A tangled disputation on the sources of the idea of a 
 heaven or heavens, and on the gnostic sects, Christian or non- 
 Christian, and related topics, is important for ecclesiastical 
 history, but does not contribute much to the direct argument 
 on either side. It may be noted that, according to Origen's 
 
 1 vi. IO : rai/Tj? Kal /j.a\\ov iri<rTfv<rov. 
 
 2 vi. II. 
 
 3 Dt Cartte Chris ti, 5. 
 
 4 vi. 15 : 6 Ta.irti.vo<j>pCjv dffx'nf^vus Kal aTrawr/ws TO TC wot/rat, 
 
 . . 
 
 tirl ruiv yovdruv Kal Trpyvris ^pi/x/a^oj, tffOrjra dvffT-fjvuv dfj.<f>urK6fj.evof 
 
 5 vi. 1 6 : aya6bv 6vra Sia^>6pus Kal TrXo&nop elvai Sia<pep6rrus a.Sin>arov. 
 
 6 vi. 16 : owe SLIT yap oi)5' d T\TX&V aAcpfrwj TOVS TTTUXOVS iiryvtffev, &v oi 
 ToXXoJ Kal <f>av\6raTol fieri ra ijOrj. 
 
 7
 
 98 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 
 
 report, certain Oriental sects (the " Ophiani "), declared by him 
 to be non-Christian, and perhaps representing the oldest 
 Gnosticism, denied even the existence of Jesus ; going beyond 
 the " docetists " who said that he had only an apparent 
 body. l Celsus, in his investigations, had come upon strange 
 formulae of Eastern mystagogues, in which the primeval idea 
 recurred of a " slaying " of the heaven and earth and of many 
 people that they might live, intermingled with ideas of the 
 cessation of death by the death of sin. Everywhere he found 
 the symbolism of the "tree of life," and of a "resurrection 
 of the flesh from the tree"; but of course completely mis- 
 interpreted it when, with vigorous sarcasm, he treated 
 it as derived from historical circumstances. 8 Modern 
 anthropologists know that, whether an actual Jesus died on the 
 cross or not, the imagery is far older. The suggestion of 
 Origen that Celsus had invented the most primitive details of 
 it 8 is peculiarly absurd. 
 
 A passage which has been thought inconsistent with the 
 opinion that identifies Celsus with Lucian's friend who wrote 
 against magic would by itself rather confirm this; although 
 for the rest the evidence is decidedly against it, since the 
 friend of Lucian was plainly an Epicurean. * Celsus quotes, 
 as from a certain Dionysius whom he had met, 5 the view that, 
 for those who live the life of philosophic virtue, magical arts 
 lose the power they have over others. The fact that he quotes 
 this, instead of giving it directly as his own view, would seem 
 to show that he desired to avoid any except a purely hypo- 
 thetical concession to the claims of magic. 
 
 While pointing to representations derived, as he thought, by 
 Christianity from Mithraism, Celsus does not appear to have 
 
 1 vi. 28 : Spa yovv JTUJS aXoyurarov jreiroiijKev 6 KA<roj Iv rots KO,T& 
 Hpumavuv \6you wapaXa/S^v wj Xpumavobs roi/s fajd' aKovetv OeXbvraf rb 
 6t>ofJM TOV 'Iriffov, K&V 8ri <ro<f>6s rts ^ fitrpios rh. ij0T) $ &i>6puTr6s TIS fy. The 
 ^ before AvOpiairos was omitted on conjecture in the edition of Delarue 
 (i733)i which till Koetschau's served as the basis for newer editions. (See 
 Koetschau's textual note, vol. ii. p. 98). 
 
 2 vi. 34 : iravraxov 8t Kei rb r^y fw^j { i/Xov Ka.1 a.v&ffTcur<.v <ra/>/f6s dr6 
 i/\<w, di6ri dlfj-ai 6 SiSa<r/ca\oj at/rcDy (rravpif tvrjX&Oii Kal ty T^KTUV ri]v 
 r^\vi]v. ir.T.X. 
 
 3 vi. 35. 
 
 4 The failure of the attempt to maintain the identification has been 
 made clear by Pelagaud. 
 
 6 vi. 41 : Aioi'i/<n<5j' TIVO. povffiK&v A.lyfarrioi>.
 
 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 99 
 
 connected the idea of Satan in particular with the Persian 
 religion. He finds that the old Greek mythologists, in their 
 stories of Titans and Giants, offer sufficient materials for dis- 
 tortion into the Christian notion of the Devil. This he 
 regards as involving an impious attribution of human weakness 
 to the highest God, who is represented as having an adversary 
 limiting his power. 1 Origen's reply consists mainly in an 
 attempt to show that the idea of a diabolic resistance to God 
 is present in the Hebrew Scriptures, and therefore cannot have 
 been derived from Greek fables, which are younger. Into his 
 attempts at allegorising we need not try to follow him, especi- 
 as he admits himself that they are rather beside the mark. 1 
 They are exceeded in irrelevancy, however, by his disquisition 
 on the Antichrist. * 
 
 The idea of the Son of God Celsus takes to have been 
 derived from the language of "ancient men" who applied 
 similar names to the world because God is its source. * 
 Origen once more replies by insisting on the greater antiquity 
 of Moses and the prophets as compared with the ancients 
 whom Celsus has in view. 
 
 Next comes a discussion on the Mosaic cosmogony, which, 
 so far at least as the creation of man is concerned, Celsus 
 declares to resemble the stories of world-production that the 
 poets of the Old Comedy set forth in jest . 5 In the detailed 
 argument, Origen evades some points by affecting uncertainty 
 whether Celsus is aiming his darts at the cosmogony in itself or 
 as it is interpreted by the heretics. To the description of the 
 heterodox interpretations as "abysmal nonsense " (Xtyxv paetr^ 
 he would have had no objection ; but Celsus, he complains, 
 has not even discriminated heresy from heresy. 7 He does not 
 profess here to give a full reply : for an adequate exposition 
 whole treatises would be required. With the subject of the 
 six days' work he has dealt in his commentary on Genesis. 8 
 In what follows, he appropriates as far as possible the Platonis- 
 ing expressions of Celsus on the relation between God and the 
 universe. Of course the most refined philosophical theses are 
 supposed to be present in the Scriptures. No light that was 
 
 1 vi. 42. a vi. 44. * vi. 45, 46. 
 
 4 vi. 47 : S.t>8pes iraXoiol r6Se rbv /cdcr/uov ws IK 6fov ytvbuevov tralSa. re 
 airrov KO.I rjWfov 
 
 8 vi. 49. ' vi. 50. 7 vi. 53. 
 
 8 vi. 60. This exposition is lost.
 
 ioo CELSUS AND ORIGEN 
 
 not there can have been derived from the heathen. Celsus is 
 in darkness, and wishes to cast darkness over the eyes of 
 Christians. 1 
 
 Amid the deluge of Scripture-quotations and expositions in 
 which it is hardly possible to detect anything that appears as if 
 it might once have looked like the semblance of a reply to an 
 outsider, a topic of some philosophical interest emerges. 
 Celsus raises objection to the expression " God is spirit " 
 (irvevfja 6 6e6s) as having a corporeal reference ; 2 and maintains 
 that the Christians, in what they say of the " spirit of God," do 
 not differ from the Stoics, with their notion of a divine breath 
 that runs through and contains in itself all things. 8 Origen's 
 reply is that when God is said to be " breath " or " spirit," this 
 is to be taken in a metaphorical sense, just as when he is 
 described as a "fire"; and that the Christians do not agree 
 with the Stoics in holding the divinity to be corporeal. In 
 reality, they understand by what they call " spirit " an incor- 
 poreal essence (ao-upa.? ova-iav). 
 
 Celsus was here of course thinking in terms of the Greek 
 psychology, for which spirit (Tn/eC/ua) meant breath or warm air, 
 intermediate between soul and gross matter. For the Jews 
 and Christians, the " spirit " of man or God, coming primarily 
 from a more archaic psychology, had acquired an application 
 to the highest part of the soul, or principle of life and thought, 
 conceived as a recipient of divine inspiration. Thus it could 
 take no intermediate position, but must be made parallel with 
 mind or intellect (vovs), the highest part of the soul in the 
 psychology of the Greeks. The Platonising Fathers, having 
 adopted the idea of an opposition of nature between soul 
 (\[/vx-fi) and body, must a fortiori dematerialise " spirit." Their 
 device, we see, was to treat the expression as figurative. For 
 the possibility of introducing more exact distinctions into their 
 own psychology, they had to wait till another advance had 
 been made by independent Greek thought. It would be vain 
 to look for an immanent development in that which, by 
 courtesy, receives the name of patristic philosophy. 
 
 A passage quoted from Celsus a little later puts briefly some 
 
 1 vi. 67 : KAtros fj.tv oZv Ka.1 ol ira.pa.Tr\-fi<rio<. avr<$ irpo/3d\\eiv 
 >da\fJ.uv -f]fjLuv OtXovfftv, i^tets S rtf <f>UTi rov \6yov tt-a<paviofjLe 
 >I> affffi&v doyndrw. 
 
 TU>I> 
 
 2 Ti. 70. 
 3 vi. 71. 
 
 rCiv
 
 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 101 
 
 characteristic objections to the Christian scheme of revelation. 
 " If God, waking up, like the Zeus of the comic poet, from the 
 long sleep, was willing to rescue the race of men from evils, why 
 did he send this breath, as you call it, to one corner, when he 
 ought to have blown through many bodies alike and despatched 
 them throughout the whole inhabited world ? l But it was by 
 way of raising laughter in the theatre that the poet let his Zeus 
 be waked up, and then made him send Hermes to the 
 Lacedaemonians and Athenians. And can you avoid the 
 thought that you have done something more ludicrous in 
 sending the Son of God to the Jews ? " When Origen treats 
 it as unworthy of the dignity of philosophy to compare the 
 awakened sender of Hermes in the comedy with God the Maker 
 of all, 2 the retort is obvious. It is precisely the intermittent 
 action and the partiality ascribed to the God of the universe, 
 as distinguished from the gods of popular belief, that the 
 philosopher regarded as more ludicrous. 
 
 For the Christian apologists of those ages, as we have in 
 part seen, the vital centre of the case was the fulfilment of 
 what were held to be the Messianic prophecies, by the life and 
 death of the Christ. Thus, when Celsus returns to the attack 
 on this position, again setting the various supernaturalist claims 
 in rivalry with one another, Origen marks the point reached 
 in the controversy by opening another book (the seventh) ; at 
 the beginning of which he once more invokes divine aid, 
 adding a prayer for the destruction of words against "the 
 truth." 
 
 The Christians, says Celsus, while they take no account of 
 the innumerable oracles among Greeks and Egyptians and 
 others, which have benefited mankind by giving equitable 
 decisions for the settlement of the earth, regard as miraculous 
 the things spoken or not spoken by the men of Judaea. 8 To 
 this Origen replies by a tirade against the " demons." Apollo's 
 oracle at Delphi, among other discreditable circumstances, 
 such as being uttered through women instead of men, once 
 went so far as to call frivolous writers like the tragic poets 
 "wise."* He notes the insinuation of Celsus in the words 
 
 1 vi. 78 : dtov TroXXii ofjLolws dia<t>vffr)ffai ffu/MTa. KO.I (carA traffav dirooretXat 
 
 TT]V OlKOVfJI^VTJV. 
 
 2 Our God (rbv rov iravrfa Sri/j-iovpybv 6ebv T)/J.I>), as Origen puts it, thus 
 emphasising the point that offended the philosophers. 
 
 8 vii. 3. 4 vii. 6.
 
 102 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 
 
 " spoken or not spoken " (\ex0tvTa ^ M Xextf&Ta) ; remarking that 
 if Celsus thinks the Messianic prophecies were only written, 
 without having been previously spoken, that shows his 
 ignorance of Hebrew chronology. 1 
 
 Celsus had gone on to state that predictions such as the 
 Christians rely upon in the Jewish writings were still, to his own 
 knowledge, put forth in Phoenicia and Palestine. There are, 
 he says, many kinds of prophecy ; but the most consummate 
 is as follows. Then he gives a description of many nameless 
 prophets, in temples and out of temples, each of whom is 
 ready and accustomed to say : "I am God, or Son of God, or 
 Divine Spirit. I am come; for already the world is being 
 destroyed, and you, O men, are lost through wrong-doings. 
 But it is my will to save you ; and you shall see me coming 
 again with celestial power. Blessed is he that now worships 
 me, but upon all others I will cast eternal fire, and upon cities 
 and countries. And men who know not their own recom- 
 penses (ot pi) rds tavrwv iroivas &ra<ri) will repent in vain and groan ; 
 but those that have obeyed me I will eternally preserve." 
 They add further, he proceeded, such utterly obscure and 
 crazy things as no one with intelligence can find out the 
 meaning of, for they have no clearness and are nothing ; but 
 to every fool or charlatan the things said give a pretext for 
 making out of them anything he likes about anything. 2 Some 
 of these prophets Celsus claims to have personally confuted 
 and brought to confess their method of fabrication. 8 
 
 To this very damaging attack Origen replies by flatly 
 declaring the statements to be falsehoods. If Celsus asserts 
 that prophecy of the old kind has continued in Phoenicia and 
 Palestine, this must be false ; for prophecy ceased among the 
 Jews through the departure of the Holy Spirit in consequence 
 of the rejection of Jesus. 4 The statement that many kinds of 
 prophecy are known to him is a false pretence. 8 His assertion 
 that he has personally confuted some of the prophets is a 
 manifest lie. If he wished to be believed, why did he not 
 mention their names? 6 Yet Origen himself tells his readers 
 more than once that he has witnessed the casting out of devils 
 by Christian exorcists. It is fair to add that he does not press 
 his individual testimony, recognising that the fact will, by 
 outsiders, be thought incredible : but he might have remem- 
 
 2 vii. 9. 3 vii. II. 
 
 B vii. 9. 6 vii. ii.
 
 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 103 
 
 bered that the statements of Celsus had on the face of them 
 less improbability than his own. 
 
 We may believe without difficulty both that Origen thought 
 he had seen devils cast out, and that Celsus had actually 
 exposed some Messianic impostors or "false Christs." 1 
 Whether any " true Christ " had appeared whose actions agreed 
 with the Hebrew prophecies as interpreted by the Christians, 
 he thought not worth more particular inquiry. What was to 
 be said on this topic as between one supernaturalist and 
 another, he had relegated to the discourse of his imaginary 
 Jew. For himself, the reflection sufficed that, even if certain 
 writings did predict that God was to eat the flesh of sheep and 
 to drink vinegar or gall, such things were not therefore to be 
 believed ; a though, in his opinion, nothing so degrading 
 could have been foretold by the prophets. The question 
 is not whether a work has been declared beforehand, but 
 whether it is worthy of God. In the base and shameful, 
 though all men go mad and seem to foretell it, we must still 
 disbelieve. 8 With much of this, Origen, by one of the 
 theological distinctions that were then being wrought out, 
 was able to agree formally. It was not God the Word that 
 suffered and died, but the man Jesus, with whose body and 
 soul God dwelt/ 
 
 1 The bearing of these " false Christs" on the mythical theory of the 
 Gospel narrative is ambiguous. On the one hand, it may be said that if 
 the apocalyptic model was so far predetermined that real persons conformed 
 themselves to it, the same model would naturally contribute some of the 
 lines when imaginary but typical incidents were to be woven around an 
 ideal figure. And if, as is likely, insurgent leaders who had uttered 
 apocalyptic prophecies were put to death by Pontius Pilate, it would be 
 easy to assert, after the lapse of a generation, that the New Messiah had 
 appeared during his procuratorship and suffered the same fate. Then we 
 should find ascribed to him the customary predictions of the end of the 
 world mixed with predictions of real events that had happened after the time 
 of Pilate ; as in what the critics call the " small apocalypsis" incorporated 
 in the Gospels. On the other hand, the vivid sketch which Celsus gives 
 of the religious agitation continually going on in the East makes it impos- 
 sible to declare a priori that the historical Jesus, if he existed, could not 
 have proclaimed himself the Son of God. 
 
 2 vii. 13. 
 
 3 vii. 14: dXX' ofiK &v irpoelTToiev rovro ol irpo(prjrai. ' Koncbv ydp eari ical 
 dv6fftov. of/Kovv otfr' el trpoetirov oflr' el jotrj irpoeiirov, ffneirreov, dXX' el rb 
 tpyov &i6v fan Oeov ical Ka\6v . TCJJ S'alffxpv Ka ^ ta/c<j>, K&V irdvres (LvOpwirot, 
 fjia.iv6fj.evoi Trpo\^"y(iv doKuffiv, 
 
 *vii. 16, 17.
 
 104 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 
 
 Celsus next contrasts the legislation of Moses and of Jesus. 
 If the prophets of the God of the Jews foretold the coming of 
 Jesus, why does God through the law of Moses make it the 
 aim of human life to be rich and powerful, and command his 
 people to slaughter out their enemies without sparing youth 
 or age, and to kill the whole race of them, on pain of suffering 
 the same things themselves if they disobey ; while his Son the 
 Nazarene (6 Nafw/>cuos &-0/>wiros) issues the contrary law, that no 
 thought is to be taken about meat or clothing, and that the 
 other cheek is to be turned to the smiter? "Whether does 
 Moses or Jesus lie ? Or did the Father, when he sent him, 
 forget what he had laid down to Moses ? Or did he he con- 
 demn his own laws and repent ? " * 
 
 Though Origen's knowledge of the Old Testament enabled 
 him to point out texts, especially in the prophets and psalmists, 
 containing the principles, and even the very expressions, of the 
 teaching of Jesus, he can make no effective use of them, but 
 soon takes refuge in allegory. For the other teachings are 
 there also ; and the whole was held to be inspired. According 
 to the true meaning of the old law, as penetrated by what 
 Origen supposed to be a deeper critical insight, the enemies 
 to be slaughtered out are sinful thoughts in the soul ; 2 while 
 riches and poverty, just as in the New Testament, have a 
 " spiritual " interpretation. To show that the prophets could 
 not have made riches, in the literal sense, the reward of a 
 righteous life, he quotes from the Epistle to the Hebrews 
 (xi. 37, 38) the list of their sufferings. 8 This of course is 
 doubly irrelevant. The document quoted is Christian ; and 
 Celsus had spoken of the ethical teaching of the law in 
 particular, and not of the prophets, as opposed to that of 
 Jesus. An incidental remark is indeed ventured, that with a 
 law of non-resistance to enemies it would have been impossible 
 for the ancient Jews to maintain themselves as a separate 
 political community ; 4 but, as this is brought into no sort of 
 relation with what has gone before, it only makes more con- 
 spicuous the failure of the reply as a whole. 
 
 The Christian idea of a " new earth," Celsus proceeded to 
 argue, was derived from Plato or from the ancient poets. 5 
 
 1 vii. 18. We may here detect an allusion to one of the gnostic positions 
 about the Demiurgus, of which the mythological development is 
 indicated in the words that follow (/cat rbv &yye\ov ccai 4irl rots tvavrlois 
 ;) 
 
 vii. 22. 3 vii. 18. 4 vii. 26.
 
 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 105 
 
 But Moses, replies Origen, was of much greater antiquity than 
 Greek letters, not to speak of Plato and the rest of the Greek 
 authors, who were younger not only than Moses but than most 
 of the prophets. Now Moses had already introduced God as 
 promising the " holy land," the " land flowing with milk and 
 honey." And by this land he could not mean the literal 
 Judaea, which is a part of the earth generally that was cursed 
 for Adam's transgression. The " pure earth situated in a pure 
 heaven," spoken of in the Phado, came therefore from the 
 Hebrews ; Plato and " the Greeks " having either heard of 
 or met with the sacred writings and appropriated what they 
 said about the " better land." 
 
 To modern readers, accustomed to a Platonised Christianity, 
 the attack on the Christians for the grossness of their materia- 
 listic conceptions will seem paradoxical : yet Origen's admis- 
 sions make it clear that the literalness with which imagery (as 
 he himself regarded it) was understood by the multitude of 
 believers, did not even need to be rhetorically exaggerated 
 for attack. Refuted on every side, continues Celsus, they will 
 return, as if they had heard nothing, to the same question : 
 " How then, unless he be perceptible, shall we know and see 
 God ? And how shall we go to him ? " l Well, he comments, 
 if bodily perception really seems to them the only means of 
 knowing the divine, let them go to the abodes of such gods 
 in human shape as Amphiaraus and Trophonius and Mopsus. 
 These at any rate associate constantly with those who will; 
 and have not merely glided once to their side. 2 In the opinion 
 of Celsus, then, says Origen, what appeared to the disciples of 
 Jesus after his resurrection was a phantom. But how can 
 a phantom have been the source of so many conversions and 
 of so many expulsions of devils ? 8 Celsus, however, introduces 
 the Christians as again asking, " What is it possible to learn 
 without sense-perception ? " and answers : " The voice is not 
 that of man nor of the soul but of flesh. And yet let them 
 hear, if indeed, craven and body-loving race as they are 
 (us Sei\i> /col QiXoffAfj.a.Toi' ytvoi), they can give ear to anything. 
 Shut off the vision of sense, and look up with the mind ; turn 
 aside from flesh, and awaken the eyes of the soul : only thus 
 will you see God." And if they are in quest of a leader on 
 
 l vil 33. 2 vii. 35. 
 
 3 The " visible eods," of whom Celsus speaks, " we know to be 
 
 demons" (foper 70/5 ^/uets roi/roi/y dai/j.ovas 6vras).
 
 io6 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 
 
 this way, let them shun deceivers and jugglers and those that 
 follow after idols ; taking care not to be themselves exposed 
 to derision as having fallen to a lower level than idolatry, 
 worshipping not even an image but a dead man, and seeking 
 a father like unto him. 1 
 
 The last touch, as we learn from Origen's repudiation, refers 
 to the notion that the ruling principle of the world is corporeal, 3 
 which historians of philosophy attribute to no less instructed a 
 Christian than Tertullian. So far as the defence is relevant, it 
 consists in the citation of thoughts from the New Testament 
 that suggest a more refined interpretation, such as the Pauline 
 distinction between things invisible and the visible things of 
 nature. 8 We shall see, however, that Celsus did not really 
 confound the Christians in an indiscriminate mass, but recog- 
 nised that those who, in their own language, called themselves 
 the " spiritual," had more philosophical ideas. 
 
 Again Origen disclaims formulas that Celsus may have heard 
 from the " Ophiani," who absolutely deny Jesus. 4 These, he 
 gladly admits, are indeed deceivers and jugglers, and indulge 
 in mythopreic fancies ; but they have nothing in common with 
 true Christians. 
 
 Whom then, the apologist asks, does Celsus wish us to 
 follow ? He sends us, as he says, to inspired (tvOtovs) poets 
 and philosophers, for whom he would have us desert Moses 
 and the prophets. "Blind guides concerning the truth," 
 though they may not have been wholly blind. 5 The pas- 
 sage quoted by Celsus from the Timceus (28C), where 
 Plato speaks of the difficulty there is in finding out " the 
 Maker and Father of this whole," he admits to be nobly ex- 
 pressed ; but adds that to Plato or any of the Greeks the diffi- 
 culty was actually insurmountable, for if it had not been so 
 they would have worshipped the Creator only. Celsus appears 
 to think that the knowledge of God is to be attained by some 
 process of mental synthesis or analysis or analogy. In this 
 way, it is at most possible to arrive at the vestibule. In the true 
 sense of knowing, " No man knoweth the Father save the 
 Son, and he to whom," by a certain divine grace, " the Son 
 will reveal him." 6 
 
 1 vii. 36. 2 Cf. vii. 27. 3 vii. 37. 
 
 4 vii. 40 : '0<f>iavol . . . wj /ecu ev TOIS avurtpu} i\tyofUi^ TOV 'Irjffovv ^ 
 dpvoti/j.evoi. 
 
 5 vii. 41. 6 vii. 44.
 
 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 107 
 
 Pointing to the disquisition in the sixth book of the Republic 
 on the visible and the intelligible world, Celsus thus exhorts 
 the Christians : " These things have been said by men of intel- 
 ligence, and if you too comprehend anything of them, it is well 
 with you. And if you think that some spirit coming down 
 from God announces divine things, by that spirit we may sup- 
 pose that these are declared ; filled with which, men of old pro- 
 claimed much that is good. But if you cannot understand 
 this, be silent and hide your own ignorance, and do not call 
 those blind who see, and lame who run ; yourselves being 
 altogether lamed in soul and mutilated, and living with the 
 body, that is, with the corpse." 1 
 
 We are careful, replies Origen, not to set ourselves in hostility 
 with what is well said, even by those outside the faith ; and it 
 is we, the abused Christians, who not merely in word distinguish 
 between "being" and " birth," between the "intelligible" and 
 the " visible," between the truth of the former and the decep- 
 tion of the latter. " But some who, by the providence of God, 
 have ascended to the knowledge of such things, act not 
 worthily of the knowledge, and commit impiety." 2 That is (as 
 he explains in the sequel with the usual embellishments from 
 the Epistle to the Romans), the philosophers, by not dissenting 
 from the religious use of statues, were involved in the general 
 guilt of idolatry ; so that their superior knowledge only rendered 
 them the more inexcusable. Further, the sacred writers have 
 not been content with a theoretical distinction between " birth " 
 and " being," but have applied it by treating the whole natural 
 life of man on earth as corruption and vanity. 8 
 
 Since you were bent on some innovation, continued Celsus, 
 why did you not take up Orpheus, if none of the other heroes 
 would suffice ? By common consent he was in possession of a 
 holy spirit, and he too died a violent death. But perhaps you 
 felt that you had been anticipated. There was Anaxarchus, 
 however, who, being cast into a mortar, and broken under 
 most outrageous blows, said, " Go on bruising the case of 
 Anaxarchus ; himself you cannot bruise." This was in truth 
 the voice of a divine spirit. Or, if he too had followers already, 
 there was still Epictetus, who, when his master was twisting his 
 leg, said, undisturbed and with a gentle smile, " You will break 
 it ; " and then, when he had broken it, " Did I not say you 
 would break it ? " What speech of this kind did your God 
 
 J vii. 45. 2 vii. 46. 3 vii. 50.
 
 io8 CELSUS AND OKI GEN 
 
 utter when he was being punished ? Or else, since some of 
 you can interpolate her verses why did you not put forward 
 the Sibyl as the child of God? Or you might have taken 
 Jonah under the gourd, or Daniel from among the wild beasts, 
 or personages still more portentous. 1 
 
 Origen is inclined to conjecture that if Celsus had not been 
 in search of an abusive parallel to Jesus, he would have con- 
 demned the poems of Orpheus to be expelled from the well- 
 regulated State ; for the Orphic is even more impious than 
 the Homeric theology. 2 The saying of Anaxarchus to the 
 tyrant of Cyprus, and the words of Epictetus, are undoubtedly 
 magnanimous ; but the silence of Jesus under insult is still 
 more impressive. 8 If, as Celsus asserts without proof, the 
 Christians have interpolated the Sibylline verses, let the genuine 
 uninterpolated ones be pointed out. In what he says of Jesus 
 (whom, in accordance with the Jewish story, he speaks of as a 
 malefactor), Origen thinks that Celsus was moved by some 
 spirit whose power Jesus had destroyed to the end that he 
 might no longer have blood and the reek of sacrifice, nourished 
 on which he used to deceive the people who seek God in 
 images. 4 
 
 The claim made to novelty on behalf of revelation, Celsus 
 now tests first in the case of an ethical precept, and then in the 
 prohibition of statues, so much dwelt on by Origen. The 
 Christians, he says, have a precept, not to resist violence, but 
 "if you are smitten on the one cheek, offer also the other." 
 This too is ancient. All that they have done is to coarsen the 
 expression. Plato makes Socrates, talking with Crito, argue 
 that one ought never to inflict an injury in return for an injury. 
 This was the opinion of Plato, as it had been the opinion of 
 divine men before him. " But about these and the other 
 things which they spoil in the borrowing, let what has been 
 said suffice. He who cares to seek further will acquire the 
 knowledge." 5 
 
 This, Origen finds, is at any rate an admission of the truth 
 of the Christian precept. And if the substance in the gospel 
 
 J vii. 53. *vii. 54. 
 
 3 It might have seemed obvious here to quote the saying of Luke xxiii. 34 ; 
 but this does not occur in the earliest manuscripts, and was pretty certainly 
 not extant in the time of Celsus or of Origen. Cyril, in his reply in the 
 fifth century to Julian, who seems to have pleaded it against the Christian 
 persecution of the Jews, declared it spurious. 
 
 4 vii. 56. e vii. 58.
 
 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 109 
 
 and in the quotation from Plato is the same, we must not 
 think that the beautiful phrasing of Plato's Greek raises it 
 entirely above the commoner and simpler language 
 in use among Jews or Christians ; although, it must be said, 
 the diction of the prophets has in the original Hebrew an 
 elegance of its own. 1 A greater benefit has, in fact, been con- 
 ferred on mankind by those who devoted themselves to putting 
 moral precepts in a popular form than by the Greek 
 philosophers, who wrote only for the few. 
 
 This argument, which, in one shape or another, we have met 
 with before, if it is intellectually a favourable specimen of 
 apologetic reasoning, is not too ingenuous. Christianity as 
 understood by Origen did not come forward simply with the 
 aim of diffusing a popular version of philosophical ethics. 
 And his Church was fundamentally more hostile to independent 
 philosophy than to " idolatry," as was shown by the event. 
 When it was securely in power, the schools of philosophy were 
 suppressed and " idols " adopted. For the present, however, 
 these were the objects of violent declamation, and intolerance 
 of them the character on which the Christians most prided 
 themselves. Celsus therefore, going on to the next point, 
 tried to show that it was no such ground for pride. The 
 same non-endurance of temples, altars and statues is found 
 among the Scythians and among the Libyan nomads and other 
 nations the most impious and lawless. The Persians too, 
 as is related by Herodotus, thought the use of these external 
 things foolish, because the gods have not human forms ; and 
 Heraclitus speaks of the folly of those who pray to statues 
 and cannot distinguish the nature of a hero or a god. But to 
 take statues for actual gods is an error of the most infantile 
 kind. No extraordinary wisdom is needed to see through this. 
 Moreover, the Jews and Christians have no special right to 
 condemn statues in human shape. According to their own 
 documents, " God made man in his own image." a 
 
 But, answers Origen, if others are intolerant of the same 
 
 1 vii. 59 : ov8t iraXiv i>7rd roO AcdXXous TTJJ 'EXXijvtKrJs <f>pdfffas \ey6f*evov 
 rb aiirb Trdvrws Kpelrrov tlvat VO/J.HTTOV rov eirre\iffTfpov dirayye\\o/ji^vov Kal 
 aTXowTT^pcus X^e<ri 7ra/xi'Iova/ois rj 'Kpurriavotr Kairoi yf rj vp&rr} 'lovSaiuv 
 X^fis, 5 * irpoipifrai xpTjcrd/icti'ot KaTaXeXotiraffiv rifuv /3i/3Xia, "Ej3pal<i>v 
 Sia\^KTtf) Kal <rotfer) ffvvOfoei TWV fv rjj 5iaX6cr<$> KO.T iKtlvovs dvaytypairrai. 
 This is one of Origen's most judicious remarks, and may serve to remind 
 us how much the New Testament owes to the English Translators. 
 
 3 vii. 62.
 
 no CELSUS AND ORIGEN 
 
 things, their intolerance is not therefore equivalent to ours. 1 
 The same act in different persons may be due to the most 
 diverse opinions. What distinguishes the Jews and Christians 
 in their refusal to pay regard to statues, is that they are 
 obeying a command of God, whose law forbids them to make 
 the likeness of anything and to worship it. 8 
 
 Celsus went on to say that he was aware of the Christian 
 view that statues are representations of demons. But why 
 should not the orders of divine beings called "daemons" or 
 " angels "or " heroes " receive their own share of honour ? 
 Has not their place in the whole been assigned them by the 
 providence of the supreme God? 8 Origen replies that all, 
 or nearly all, who acknowledge the existence of demons 
 acknowledge that some of them are evil. Now God does not 
 appoint, but only permits, the part which evil beings have in 
 the whole. This, indeed, belongs to a deeper investigation, of 
 which Celsus had no knowledge. So far are the Christians 
 from approving a worship of the demonic or diabolic powers 
 served by " the nations " that they exorcise them by prayers 
 and by lessons from the Holy Scriptures. 
 
 To judge by the opening of his eighth book, Origen thought 
 that this method might not be without efficacy as applied to 
 the spirit or demon that animated Celsus. 4 He had before 
 this been brought to confess that his own arguments scarcely 
 suffice without the aid of faith divinely implanted in his hearers, 
 and that the worth of his confutations depends on something 
 other than the " wisdom of men." s 
 
 The Christians, says Celsus, when they raise objection to the 
 worship of the " demons " on the ground that " no man can 
 serve two masters," are, so far as their thought is concerned, 
 impressing a copy of their own passion on the mind of God. 6 
 No doubt there is among men a detraction from the service of 
 one when another is served; and the same competition is 
 conceivable in relation to different heroes or demons. But 
 with the highest God, who is untouched by injury or grief, 
 there can be none to compete. Rather, in the service of those 
 ministers who must have received their places in the whole 
 
 1 vii. 63 : ov Trapb TOVTO fffov tarl ri> fri) d^xe<r0at TOVTUV tuelvovs r$ /cai 
 at avruv. 
 
 a vii. 64. s vii. 67. 4 Cf. vii. 56, viii. 10. 5 Cf. v. I. 
 
 8 viii. 2 : vofj.lfi 8t TOVS TOVTO 
 TOO 9e6v.
 
 CELSUS AND ORIGEN in 
 
 by his appointment, he himself also is served. To say other- 
 wise involves the impiety of dividing the kingdom of God and 
 making a sedition, as if there were some party-chief opposed 
 to him in the universe. 1 For the rest, if they did in fact refuse 
 all honour save to one God, there might be some rational con- 
 sistency in their unbending attitude ; but, as it is, they devote 
 an excessive worship to him who lately appeared, and do not 
 think that in the service of this his minister they commit any 
 fault towards God. 2 If you should tell them that their founder 
 is not peculiarly the Son of God, but that God is the Father of 
 all, and is alone to be truly worshipped, they would not hear 
 of it. What distinguishes them is not really their high venera- 
 tion for the Supreme, but their extraordinary magnifying of 
 the founder of their sect. 3 
 
 Origen, in the small portion of his reply which has a 
 philosophical character, admits that properly there can be no 
 grief or injury to God. Worship of God, to the exclusion 
 of other powers, is for the sake of the worshippers, who thus 
 guard against withdrawal from their own highest good. 4 Here 
 he coincides in principle, though not in application, with a 
 defender of the pagan ceremonial cults like the author of the 
 De Mysteriis, who agrees with his antagonist Porphyry that 
 observances cannot move the gods, but holds that they bring 
 those who perform them nearer to the divinity. And in 
 speculation, here as on occasion before, the Christian Father 
 admits a kind of polytheism. Subordinate " gods " (i.e., the 
 angels) are spoken of in the Bible ; though " all the gods of 
 the nations are devils." 8 On the " demons," he thinks it 
 sufficient to educe from the Scriptures the accepted Christian 
 position. Whence, he inquires, can Celsus prove that honours 
 have been appointed to these as to subordinate powers ? If 
 Celsus puts a corresponding question about Jesus, " we shall 
 prove that to be honoured has been given him of God, ' that 
 all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the 
 Father' (John v. 23)." The proof has been furnished through 
 prophecy and miracle. 6 No worship is withdrawn from the 
 Father, since the Father and the Son are one (John x. 30) : 
 and yet there are two " hypostases," of which the second is 
 subordinate to the first. 7 Thus the Saviour is not by the 
 
 1 viii. II. a viii. 12. 3 viii. 14. 4 viii. 6, 8. 
 
 6 viii. 3. 6 viii. 9. 7 viii. 12.
 
 ii2 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 
 
 Christians (with the exception of a few among the many) 
 regarded as the highest God ; for they believe his own saying, 
 " The Father who sent me is greater than I." It is therefore 
 a calumny when Celsus accuses them of subjecting him whom 
 they now call the Father to the Son of God. 1 
 
 We might have taken this for a slightly rhetorical statement 
 by Celsus of the practice of the orthodox Christians as distin- 
 guished from their theory ; but it is evident from the passage 
 next following 2 that he had definitely some of the Gnostics in 
 view, who in their formulae declared the Son of Man greater than 
 the God that rules the world. Origen, as usual, repudiates the 
 " heretics ; " but he cannot do this without a recurrence to the 
 absurd suggestion that perhaps Celsus did not find the theory, 
 but constructed or added to it. There is nothing whatever in 
 the character of Celsus as revealed in the fragments of his work 
 to justify the ascription to him of fraudulence or indifference to 
 truth. On the contrary, these are the qualities that most 
 strongly arouse his moral indignation. 
 
 To forms of cult he evidently attached no importance. In 
 the endeavour to understand the scrupulosity of the Christians, 
 he could only conjecture that their avoiding the setting up of 
 altars and statues and temples must proceed from reliance on 
 the policy of holding together as a secret society. 8 Pure theism 
 does not necessitate their religious separatism. The God who 
 is common to all is good and has need of nothing, and is with- 
 out envy. What prevents those who are especially dedicated 
 to him from taking part also in the national festivals ? 4 If the 
 " idols " are nothing, what harm is there in a public feast ? If 
 there are any " demons," then it is manifest that they too are of 
 God, and ought to be propitiated in accordance with the laws. 8 
 
 The religion of the Christians, answers Origen, is too inward 
 and spiritual to permit of their founding external altars and 
 statues and temples. And it seems more reasonable, having 
 regard to the nature of God, to abstain from festivals that trace 
 their beginnings to fabulous stories. If some one should urge 
 that the Christians have holy days of their own, the reply is 
 that the perfect Christian rises above all this symbolism, 6 which 
 in its sensible form exists to remind the many of what they 
 might otherwise forget. 7 These seem to be the rational ele- 
 
 1 viii. 14. 2 viii. 15. 3 viii. 17. 4 viii. 21. 
 
 5 viii. 24. 6 viii. 22. 7 viii. 23.
 
 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 113 
 
 ments of his answer, disentangled from the Scriptural exposi- 
 tions in which they are involved. 
 
 The next argument of Celsus is clear enough in itself, but 
 seems to have been fundamentally unintelligible to Origen 
 through his inability to realise that there could be any ultimate 
 standard but a supernatural revelation. If the Christians 
 have some traditional rule (n irdrpiov) l that requires them to 
 abstain from sacrificial meals, then they ought to abstain from 
 the flesh of all animals, as was the opinion of Pythagoras, 
 because of the honour he paid to the soul and its instruments. 2 
 The implication clearly is : such a generalised position would 
 put the particular scruple on the ground of reason and humanity. 
 In answer, Origen proceeds again to quote the Scriptures in 
 order to show what is or what is not a divine command. If 
 there is any ground for abstinence apart from revelation, to him 
 it can only be the ascetic ground. 8 The Christians do not 
 share the opinion of Pythagoras about souls, but honour only 
 the rational soul and its instruments. 4 
 
 In the same passage, however, we come upon a curious point 
 of coincidence between the philosophers and the orthodox. If, 
 proceeds Celsus, the Christians abstain for the sake of not 
 joining in a banquet with the demons, " I congratulate them 
 on their wisdom," which consists in a slowness to understand 
 that they are always thus participating. For do not the bread 
 they eat and the wine they drink and the fruits they taste and 
 the very water, and even the air they breathe, come to them 
 from the " demons ? " The same argument, with the substitu- 
 tion of " demiurgus " for " demons," was pressed by the Fathers 
 against the Gnostics. Celsus is of course arguing on the basis 
 of what was held in common by Jews, by Christians, and by 
 heathen polytheists, who all alike conceived the powers of the 
 visible world under this personal form. But, Origen replies, 
 the good things mentioned come from the angels of God, not 
 from the powers called demons. From these, which are all 
 
 1 Such as the rule of the Essenes. 
 
 2 viii. 28. 3 viii. 30. 
 
 4 Whatever insight was contained in the distinction between the human 
 and the animal mind which the Christians were appropriating, was of course 
 derived from the Peripatetics and the Stoics, who had made it clear to 
 themselves that conceptual thought is peculiar to man. The true line of 
 psychological advance, however, was to make the dogma not more but less 
 hard-and-fast. This was attempted by Plutarch, Celsus and Porphyry.
 
 n 4 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 
 
 evil, come famine and drought and pestilence. 1 He thus gives 
 his adherence to a kind of Persian dualism, as against the 
 extreme pessimism of some Gnostics, who formally declared 
 the whole visible world evil. Later orthodoxy tended to a 
 completer acceptance of the philosophic position that the system 
 of the world is an absolute unity ; though this had still to be 
 reconciled with the existence of a devil. By the belief in the 
 devil and his angels Origen is so deeply permeated that he will 
 allow those who, like Celsus, are under their government, and 
 " know not God," to give thank-offerings to demons. 2 And 
 comparison with other passages shows that this is not mere 
 irony. 8 
 
 The remainder of the book strongly confirms the view that 
 Celsus was not simply a detached philosopher, but was a 
 practical administrator, probably a Proconsul, like Hierocles, 
 the later opponent of Christianity, His last resource is to try 
 to persuade those who will still, in spite of all argument, adhere 
 to the new faith, not to set themselves in open opposition to 
 public institutions and withdraw wholly from civic life. The 
 danger of a combined attack by the barbarians on the Empire 
 was visible, as indeed it had been to Tacitus. 4 The spirit to 
 resist, Celsus evidently felt, was departing. Thus he is brought 
 to appeal to the surviving patriotism of the more reasonable 
 Christians to come to the aid of the State against its impending 
 destruction, which threatens to involve philosophy and their 
 own religion in one ruin. Those who have commented on the 
 closing passage have noticed how Origen has cut down the 
 
 1 viii. 31. 
 
 2 viii. 33 : Kal Sia rotavra 8 K A<ros fj.tv ws ayvo&v 6ebv ra 
 Sai/j.offiv diroSiSoru. 
 
 3 Cf. viii. 34 : owe ava.ipovfj.ev o$v Kal ^aets TO iro\\ovs dvai 5a.ifj.ovas 
 yrjs d\Xd (f>afj,ev elvai uv avrobs Kal SuvaffOai tv rots 0at/\ois dia TTJV ^Kel 
 Kaiclav, fj,Tjdtv St dvva<r6ai irpbs TOUS v5vffa/J.tvovs rijv iravoir\Lav TOV ffeov. 
 In c. 36 a curious fact is given about foods " tabooed " in the names of the 
 " demons," accompanied by a characteristically naive explanation. 
 
 4 See Agricola, 12 ; Germania, 33. Consciously or unconsciously, Tacitus 
 brings into proximity with the danger from without a symptom of internal 
 decline. Speaking of voyages to discover the reported " pillars of Hercules " 
 in the northern Ocean, he rema-ks that " daring was not wanting to Drusus 
 Germanicus, but Ocean stood in the way, both of inquiry into himself and 
 into Hercules, Soon no one any longer made the attempt : it seemed 
 holier and more reverent to believe than to know about the deeds of the 
 gods." (Germania, 34.) This was praeparatio evangelica in the ancient 
 religion.
 
 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 115 
 
 appeal. Substantially he has nothing to reply to the charge of 
 "incivism" against the Christian Church. Indeed, some 
 ground is given for the inference that the conversion of the 
 barbarians after the dissolution of the ancient State was already 
 a not unattractive prospect. 
 
 Before his final appeal, Celsus tries to terrify the fanatics, 
 who publicly insult statues and blaspheme the gods, 1 with the 
 vengeance of those " demons " in the reality of whom, we must 
 remember, they firmly believed. Origen, while half conceding 
 that this may have been done by uneducated Christians, 
 declares it contrary to the divine law, which bids us " bless and 
 curse not;" and argues that no Christian could be foolish 
 enough to expect that his impunity after such an act would 
 contribute to destroy the ordinary opinions about the gods. 
 For neither the founders of the impious systems of so-called 
 philosophy that deny providence nor those who embrace their 
 doctrines have suffered any of the things that are thought 
 evil by the multitude. On the contrary, instead of having 
 fallen visibly under the displeasure of heaven, they enjoy health 
 and wealth. 
 
 A priest of Apollo or Zeus, says Celsus, 3 would answer with 
 the verse of the gnomic poet about the " mills of the gods," 3 or 
 with that of Homer on the punishment of children's children. 4 
 Origen of course knows the philosophic teaching which Celsus, 
 as we see by his putting the appeal to terror in the mouth of a 
 priest, holds in reserve. This teaching he urges against the 
 tone of the appeal. Chastisement is not in the end an evil 
 to be feared, since it is for the good of the punished ; and the 
 individual is responsible only for his own sins. To show that 
 this " better " view is the teaching of the Bible, he quotes 
 Ezekiel ; adding that the present is not the proper occasion to 
 explain the significance of the "parable " in Exodus about 
 " visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children unto the 
 third and fourth generation." Then, to the counter-argument 
 of Celsus, that the God of the Christians did not avenge what 
 was undergone by his Son, he replies that vengeance was taken 
 when Jerusalem was destroyed. 5 
 
 1 viii. 38 : elra . . . tprjffi TOI>S Xpumwovj Xtyetv Idoii Tra/xwrA j r<J5 
 dyd\fjLa.Ti. TOV Ai6r $ 'AirdXXuvos $ STOV 77 Oeov /3\cur<77juD Kal pairifu, Kal 
 fj.e dfjujverai.. 
 
 2 viii. 40. * tyt dewv d\tov<n (ivXoi, tiXtowri dt Xerrd. 
 
 *//. xx. 308. 5 viii. 42.
 
 u6 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 
 
 To an enumeration of the benefits conferred by oracles, he 
 opposes similar marvels related in the Scriptures ; observing 
 incidentally that the philosophic schools of Democritus and 
 Epicurus and Aristotle have not believed in the Greek stories, 
 but would perhaps have believed in " ours " if they had 
 witnessed the evident miracles performed by Moses or by some 
 of the prophets or by Jesus himself. 1 And what but miraculous 
 powers could have given the apostles of Jesus, " unlearned 
 and ignorant men," the courage to devote themselves to the 
 preaching of Christianity. 2 
 
 The mystagogues of other sacred rites, says Celsus, hold 
 out the threat of eternal punishment, as you do. Why should 
 we believe your threats more than theirs ? 3 Origen here again 
 proposes the ethical test. Who is brought to live better by the 
 threatenings ? For the rest, the evidence relating to the pagan 
 oracles is nothing compared with that from the fulfilled pre- 
 dictions of Hebrew prophecy. 
 
 Approaching now the end, Celsus turns with a final expres- 
 sion of contempt from those who believe they are to rise again 
 for reward or punishment with their bodies, and makes his 
 appeal to the more philosophical, who conceive that which is 
 eternal in them to be the soul or the mind (whatever they 
 choose to call it, spirit or living soul or offspring of a divine 
 and incorporeal nature). With Christians of this kind he can 
 hold discourse. 4 Perceiving evidently the kinship oi their 
 "spiritualist" doctrines to the more mysterious among the 
 teachings of early philosophers, he goes on to cite Empedocles 
 as one of those who declare that men have been banished to 
 a life of wandering in the body, either because this is requisite 
 for the ordering of the whole, or to expiate some ante-natal 
 sin, or through some drag on the soul. 5 Then, since the 
 " demons " are the guardians of this earthly life, must you not 
 pay deference to them if you wish to live at all, and not forth- 
 with to go out of the world ? 6 The Egyptians, for example, 
 tell of the control such powers exercise over the parts of the 
 human frame. 7 Yet, on the other hand, " perhaps we ought 
 
 1 viii. 45. 2 viii. 47. 3 viii. 48. 
 
 4 viii. 49 : TOIS fir)v ye rqv ^vx^v -J) rbv vovv(eire TrvevfjLartKbv TOVTOV 
 Ka\e'iv eire irvev/j,a voepbv dyiov /cat ftaKdpiov etre ij/vxty %Gxra.v eire Oeias KG! 
 a~^} r idTov (fujcrtus HKJOVOV inrepovpdvi6v re ical &<f>6apTov tW 6' TL /cat o TI 
 Xaipovffiv 6vo(JLdoi>T5), rots TOVTO e\irL^ov<nv ^fetv a-'ubviov <rvv 9e$, rot/rots 
 
 viii. 53. 6 viii. 55. 7 viii. 58.
 
 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 117 
 
 not to disbelieve wise men," who say that most of the terrestrial 
 demons, being bound to fleshly things, can only hold out to 
 men or cities the prospect of material benefits ; whence devotion 
 to them must have its limits, so that we may not become too 
 much attached to the body and forget what is divine. 1 
 
 This concession was adapted to the popular demonology of 
 of the Platonists, who were joining with Neo-Pythagorean reformers 
 to oppose animal sacrifices. From those reformers Christians 
 of the higher type, to whom Celsus is now addressing himself, 
 had no doubt derived some positions, as the Essenes are 
 thought to have done earlier. Porphyry, who himself wrote 
 against blood-sacrifice, and urged as a popular argument the 
 demonology here referred to by Celsus, appears to have main- 
 tained in his work against the Christians that they had no right 
 to reject in principle what was commanded by the Jewish law. 
 The Christian Father has hardly a glimpse of this difficulty. 
 Any one, he exclaims triumphantly, 2 who may have thought 
 our position impious when Celsus was theologising on oracles, 
 and we affirmed that they were works of demons, can now see 
 that in the end he is obliged to agree with the Christians, " as 
 if conquered by the spirit of truth." 3 We can have nothing to 
 do, he reiterates, with the powers that love the reek of sacrifice. 
 And yet service to such a power was just as plainly commanded 
 by the Jewish law as by the laws of " the nations ; " though it 
 was opposed in passages of the prophets, as by Greek 
 philosophers and reformers, from Heraclitus 4 onward. Origen, 
 to whom names were so important, would probably have 
 defended himself by distinguishing between " angelic " and 
 " demonic " exactors of bloodshed ; if he had not chosen 
 rather to recur to his method of allegorising the law. 
 
 To the appeal of Celsus not wilfully to provoke the anger of 
 rulers, who cannot have had assigned to them the government 
 of things here without some daemonic might, Origen replies 
 partly in language not unworthy of a philosopher, by rejecting 
 
 1 viii. 60. 2 viii. 62. 
 
 3 When Celsus suggests as an alternative that it may be better to regard 
 the demons as really in need of nothing and as doing justice without 
 favour, but as pleased with the voluntary offerings of piety, Origen finds 
 that he has slipped back into falsehood under his own wickedness. Then 
 he judicially concludes : 5o/rei 5^ /JLOI crvyxe'iffOa.i Kara rbv r6iroi> Kal 5re jj.ti> 
 rb iiyenoviKov virb rCjv 5ai/j.6vuv rapdrreffOai, tffO' 8re d Kal 'avavr/Quv drr6 
 TTJS vir' tKelvois dXoyiffrlas (ir' 6\Lyoi> n fiXiirtiv TOV aXrjOovs. (viii. 63.) 
 
 4 Fragm. 5 (Diels).
 
 n8 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 
 
 all unmanly compliance, and partly by calling to mind that the 
 Christians too have been taught that " the powers that be are 
 ordained of God" (Rom. xiii. i) 1 and have been commanded 
 to "honour the king" (i Peter ii. i7). 2 They cannot, how- 
 ever, swear by the emperor's fortune; because "fortune" is 
 either nothing but a name, in which case it ought not to be 
 sworn by, or it is actually one of the evil demons. Celsus 
 doubtless remembered that he was addressing Oriental sectaries, 
 from whom the modes of thought that had given birth to the 
 titles of Alexander the son of Ammon, and Ptolemy the 
 Saviour, and Antiochus the God Manifest, and Divus Julius, 
 were not alien ; yet he shows no disposition to override the 
 individual conscience, but allows, and even affirms strongly, 
 that all tortures and all deaths ought to be endured in preference 
 to doing or saying anything impious towards God. 8 But, he 
 says deprecatingly, and as if hoping that aesthetic feeling might 
 count for something, you will show more reverence to God by 
 praising the Sun or by singing a beautiful paean to Athena, 
 thus going through the manifestations of divinity in detail, 
 than by stopping short at a colourless devotion to the highest. 4 
 
 We have no objection, Origen replies, to praising the Sun, as 
 a creature of God : indeed we do this of our own accord ; but, 
 as we flee fables and seek truth, we cannot dissociate Athena 
 (whom some may allegorise into Wisdom), 5 from the manifold 
 adventures of the goddess. Nor may we sing hymns except 
 to God and his only-begotten Son, whom the sun and moon 
 and stars also hymn. 
 
 Then, returning to the argument about the respect to be 
 paid to rulers, he quotes the warning of Celsus to the Christians 
 that, in view of their attitude, it is reasonable for the 
 Emperor to take measures against them. " For if all should do 
 the same as you, there will be nothing to prevent his being 
 left alone and deserted, and the things on earth becoming the 
 prey of the most lawless and the wildest barbarians ; no fame 
 being left any longer among men either of true wisdom or of your 
 religion." 6 And, he proceeded, it is no use your saying that 
 
 4 viii. 66 : t&v dt Kf\etiri TIS ev<f>rj/j.rj<rai rbv '"H\iov 7} rr]v 'AOrivav Trpodvfj.6- 
 rara yuera KO\OV Traiavos eti<f>-ri/j,fTv, oifrw rot fftfieiv na\\oi> 5<5|eis rbv p&yav 
 6e6v, ta.v leal roikrSe v/jivrjs' -rb yinp Of offers dia irdvruv difl-ibv 
 ytverai. 
 
 5 viii. 67. 6 viii. 68.
 
 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 119 
 
 if the Romans are persuaded by you, and give up their 
 ancestral laws about things divine and human, your Most 
 High will come down and fight for them. In spite of all the 
 promises you attribute to him, his first worshippers, instead of 
 being lords of the whole earth, are left without a clod or a 
 hearthstone ; and you yourselves are in hiding and are sought 
 out to be condemned to death. 1 You fancy indeed that you 
 will persuade one set of rulers after another till you have 
 brought all the world under a single authority ; a but he who 
 thinks it possible that the inhabitants of Asia and Europe and 
 Africa, that Greeks and barbarians to the ends of the earth, 
 should agree in accepting the same law, knows nothing. 8 Come 
 and help the Emperor with all your strength : be his fellow- 
 labourers in administering justice ; fight in the army as soldiers 
 and as commanders. 4 Take part in governing your country. 5 
 
 The extremely fragmentary character of the concluding 
 citations is obvious on the surface. Origen's reply, here 
 especially, fills much space but can easily be brought into 
 small compass. " If all should do the same as I," the bar- 
 barians will yield themselves to the word of God and be the 
 mildest and most law-abiding of men. 6 It has been foretold in 
 the prophetic writings that all the nations shall be brought 
 "under one yoke." This, in its full sense, is perhaps not 
 possible for those still in the body; but it is not impossible 
 when they are released from the body. 7 We help the emperors 
 by praying for them, as we are instructed to do (i Tim. ii. i, 2). 
 You do not make the priests of your own temples serve in the 
 army, seeing that they have to keep their hands pure for 
 sacrifice. 8 The Christians, more than all other men, benefit 
 their countries; for they train their fellow-citizens to piety 
 towards the city of God, " taking up into a certain divine and 
 heavenly city those that live well in the least cities." 9 In each 
 city we have a fatherland of another constitution (dXXo ffforwa. 
 varpidos), founded by the word of God ; and we call to govern- 
 
 1 viii. 69. This, it is held, fixes the time of composition of the work of 
 Celsus after 177 (or 176), the date of the rescript of Marcus Aurelius here 
 alluded to ; while a reference in c. 71 to " our present rulers" (ol vvv /Scwi- 
 Xei'ovres TUJ.&V) places it within the time when Commodus was 
 associated in the empire (177-180). (See Koetschau's Introduction, p. 1.) 
 
 2 viii. 71. 3 viii. 72. 4 viii. 73. 5 viii. 75. 6 viii. 68. 
 
 7 viii. 72 : Kal rd.x a d\i)&<*>s dSvvaTov pv rb TOIOVTO roit fri tv ffufJiafft, 01) 
 H*]>> ddvvarov Kal a.iro\v6fi(nv afrrwv. 
 
 viii. 73. 9 viii. 74.
 
 120 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 
 
 ment over the churches of God those who are unwilling to 
 rule, but whose fitness we recognise and therefore constrain 
 them. 1 
 
 Finally, Origen asks Ambrose whether Celsus fulfilled his 
 promise to write another book, in which he proposed to give 
 instructions to those who were willing to take his advice. If 
 so, he is requested to send it, so that Origen may refute the 
 false doctrine it contains, and at the same time bear witness to 
 the truth of anything that is well said. 
 
 It is not altogether because the event is known that readers 
 have been impressed in the concluding passage of Celsus with 
 the consciousness of impending defeat, and throughout the 
 treatise of Origen with his full confidence in victory. As Plutarch 
 said, that from the time of Caesar the whole drift of things seemed 
 to be to monarchy, so a century or two later it might have 
 been perceived that the drift was to its complement theocracy. 
 Yet, if we look at the present state of the world, we shall find 
 that, so far as there is a principle of rational order in it, it has 
 returned to a system much more like that of Celsus than of 
 Origen. Europe was indeed for a time brought under the 
 "one yoke" of the "great Church," whose law, as Origen pro- 
 claimed, was to be king to the exclusion of other laws ; a but 
 the new reign still left " many unsubdued." In Europe itself 
 the turn of the tide came ; and now the Western successors of 
 those who adopted Christianity or had it imposed on them re- 
 cognise, within limits differing little from those that Celsus and 
 the statesmen of his time would have fixed, the autonomy of 
 local religions. The claim of an authoritative creed to lay 
 down the law within that which it considered its own sphere is 
 repudiated by the principles of legislation. Take for example 
 the government of India, and observe whether it conforms 
 more to the model of Rome in the age of the Antonines or to 
 the ideal of the historic Christian Church. 
 
 The doctrine of the " one yoke " is of course still repre- 
 sented. It is cherished by reactionary minds in Europe ; and 
 it is embodied in the claims of actual institutions. The 
 Papacy, the Caliphate and the Tsardom alike proclaim an 
 order that is in theory universal, authoritative and revealed. 
 The head of each is a spiritual descendant of the anointed 
 priest-king whose phantom, hovering over the world, has more 
 
 1 viii. 75. 2 v. 40.
 
 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 121 
 
 than once organised the hopes and fears of the multitude in 
 the interests of absolute power. This ideal, though we call it 
 Asiatic, does not, however, extend over all Asia. Probably 
 starting, as we have seen, from Babylonia, it moved on the 
 whole westward. It was promoted by the denationalising 
 process carried out by Assyrian kings. It seized the imagina- 
 tion of Persians and of Jews, and took form in systematic 
 religious propaganda. 1 At last it realised itself in the Christian 
 and to a less extent in the Mohammedan religion ; in " Holy 
 Wars" for Cross or Crescent, and in the Holy Inquisition. 
 Eastern Asia, though not since then wholly untouched by the 
 movement, has in the meantime preserved its own types which 
 are different. In India, a priestly caste secured for 
 itself the highest social rank ; but, being pre-eminently 
 speculative, it maintained philosophic liberty, though its dis- 
 tinctive philosophy began as a mystical development of religion, 
 and hardly at all went through a scientific stage like philosophy 
 in ancient Greece and in modern Europe. The more 
 secular-minded races of China and Japan, while preserving 
 the outward form of a political theocracy the emperor being 
 held divine placed the idea of the State and not of a Church 
 uppermost. Geographical extremes therefore in a manner 
 meet. The nations that have emerged from the theocratic 
 order of Christendom into the systematised religious 
 tolerance of modern Europe and America have a certain 
 common ground with those that have stood outside the process 
 and formed themselves on a different model from the beginning. 
 In spite of the industrial chaos and barbarism through which 
 we are passing, a kind of " grammar," not of " assent " but of 
 a liberal order, thus appears to be secure. And on a general 
 survey it does not seem likely that the forces of light will be 
 overpowered by the forces of darkness. Still, it is worth while 
 to remind ourselves that the ancient European civilisation, 
 even in its later and on the whole inferior phase, had some- 
 thing which we have not. The theoretical principles to which 
 the men who practically directed affairs openly appealed as the 
 highest, were those of a free philosophy, not of an authoritative 
 creed. Now the unity that may for good and not for evil 
 embrace the world is that which is arrived at in the end by 
 the consensus of the best minds ; not a unity imposed in the 
 name of something outside humanity. For the order of the 
 
 1 See the works of Professors Meyer and Gunkel, referred to above.
 
 122 CELSUS AND ORIGEN 
 
 universe, so far as man is concerned, expresses itself, as Celsus 
 may still teach us, through human reason, and not through 
 superhuman beings coming down to live among men.
 
 JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA 
 
 WHENEVER the time shall arrive for a final estimate of the 
 doctors of Latin scholasticism, the compassion expressed by 
 Dante for the virtuous and philosophic heathens whom he saw 
 in Limbo l will be transferred to them. Powerful as were their 
 intellects, not even the greatest of them could achieve work 
 having the permanent suggestiveness or the aesthetic value we 
 find even in much that is not of supreme rank in ancient and 
 modern thought. Under the compressive force of authoritative 
 revealed religion, the most that they could do was to prepare 
 the way for happier ages by showing, through the very failure 
 of all constructive effort, that their faith and their philosophy 
 could not live together. In the end, positive advance came 
 not from their results, but from fuller knowledge of the Greeks, 
 whom they themselves, with imperfect means, had sought out 
 as the masters of all science. The humanists and thinkers of 
 the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries took the right way in 
 breaking, as far as might be, with the middle period. Now, 
 however, that the intellectual contest has long been decided, 
 even those who have least sympathy with that period, ought to 
 make some attempt at doing justice especially to the figures in 
 it that belonged by spiritual affinity not to their own but to a 
 past or a future age. 
 
 Among these, unquestionably, the greatest is John Scotus 
 Erigena. Born in Ireland early in the ninth century, he does 
 more than any one else to confirm the opinion that has found 
 favour about the adventurous genius of the Celt. For, while 
 frequently penetrating, through the veil of its Christianised 
 version, to the genuine thought of that Neo-Platonic philosophy 
 which was the last expression of Hellenism, he is even more 
 
 1 Inf. iv. 43-45.
 
 124 JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA 
 
 remarkable by his direct anticipations of Spinoza and Berkeley 
 and Hegel. And these are not the casual thoughts of one who 
 did not know whither they might tend. No one was ever more 
 clearly conscious of what he meant to say, and of its bearing ; 
 and no thinker was ever more audacious. Yet even this 
 illustrates the strength of the spiritual yoke that had now been 
 laid on the European mind. When Erigena comes down from 
 the heights of metaphysics where he is at home to the details 
 of his system, it is evident that for him there is no conceivable 
 structure of life and thought but that of Catholic Christianity. 
 Historical sense has disappeared. Boethius, who died in 524 
 or 525, was still an "ancient." For him, the Greek and 
 Roman past presented itself in perspective. For Erigena, on 
 the other side of the gulf, it is all "heathendom," with its 
 " secular philosophers," whose intellectual authority has sunk 
 under that of the Church and its fathers. A father like Origen, 
 who had shown comparative independence, he places among 
 the greatest of men. And yet to the intellect of Erigena, in an 
 atmosphere not fatal to criticism, it would have been evident 
 that in the kingdom of thought the least among the Greek 
 philosophers is greater than Origen. 
 
 Of his own predilection for the Greeks he was perfectly 
 conscious, though he fancied that it was for the ecclesiastical 
 writers whom he read, when really it was for the older thoughts 
 they transmitted to him. He must have been one of the last 
 in Western Europe to possess an effective knowledge of Greek 
 before it ceased for six centuries. This he had no doubt 
 acquired in the monastic schools of Ireland. From Ireland he 
 found his way to the court of Charles the Bald, the grandson 
 of Charlemagne, who placed him at the head of the royal 
 school in Paris, and set him to translate into Latin the writings 
 attributed to Dionysius the Areopagite. To his translation, 
 Erigena appended some verses in which he vigorously assailed 
 papal Rome, and declared that the glory had departed to the 
 Greeks and to Constantinople. This was an illusion of which 
 doubtless a visit to the Greek empire would have cured him ; 
 as the last Neo-Platonists were cured of their illusion that they 
 would find the ideal state in Persia. The Latin West was at 
 any rate alive : the double-headed system of Pope and King or 
 Emperor was less deadly than the Byzantine form of theocracy, 
 as events have shown. Amid conflicting wills, the division of 
 power between the spiritual and the secular chiefs allowed 
 modern Europe to emerge. And Erigena found in practice
 
 JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA 125 
 
 the advantage of the division. His imperial patron could 
 protect him from the demand of Pope Nicholas I. that he 
 should be sent to him to be examined, or at least should be 
 dismissed from court. 1 The demand may not unnaturally 
 have been provoked by such verses as these. 
 
 " Constantinopolis florens nova Roma vocatur : 
 
 Moribus et muris Roma vetusta cadis. 
 Transiit imperium, mansitque superbia tecum, 
 
 Cultus avaritiae te nimium superat. 
 Vulgus ab extremis distractum partibus orbis, 
 Servorum servi, nunc tibi sunt domini. 
 
 Truncasti vivos crudeli vulnere sanctos, 
 
 Vendere nunc horum mortua membra soles." 2 
 
 But of course it would be an error to regard this as an attack 
 on the order of Western Christendom. The imagination is 
 already that of Dante, that an ideal Christendom had once 
 existed, and that its rulers had become corrupt. 
 
 Erigena, it appears from contemporary evidence, was not an 
 ecclesiastic. He is described as a scholasticus or man of 
 learning. As such he had won a great reputation, accompanied 
 by suspicions of heterodoxy. These may first have arisen from 
 the treatise he wrote, at the request of Hincmar, Archbishop 
 of Rheims, and Pardulus, Bishop of Laon, against the ultra- 
 Augustinian doctrine of predestination put forth by the monk 
 Gottschalk. The treatise of Erigena De Praedestinatione, 
 which saw the light (or the darkness) in 851, was condemned 
 by the Synod of Valence in 855, and by the Synod of Langres 
 in 859. These condemnations, however, had no traceable 
 effect on the fortunes of Erigena, and they certainly did not 
 change the spirit of his philosophising. In his great work De 
 Divisions Naturae, the distinctive views of his early tract fall 
 into their place as part of a comprehensive system ; and still 
 more audacious positions are added to those that had called 
 forth even in that age the wail, " Putas Filius hominis 
 veniens inveniet fidem in terra P " Not till the thirteenth 
 century, however, was his later work decisively suppressed. 
 The reason assigned for the suppression was that the " worms 
 
 l /oannis Scoti Opera, Migne, Patrol. Lot. vol. cxxii., pp. 1025-6. 
 *0pp. 1194- 
 
 3 See the " Monitum ad Lectorem " prefixed to the Liber de Praedestina- 
 tione. (Opp. 353-4-)
 
 126 JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA 
 
 of heretical pravity " with which it was found to swarm had 
 attracted the lovers of those profane novelties that the 
 Apostle gives instruction to avoid. In short, it was thought 
 to have contributed to the revolt against the Church which 
 had just been stamped out in blood and fire. After the 
 Albigensian Crusade came the centralised Inquisition ; and, in 
 1225, Honorius III. ("Bishop, Slave of the Slaves of God, 
 etc."), with the usual preamble about the enemy who ceases 
 not to sow tares, sentenced it to the flames. 1 
 
 Thus for the later Middle Ages for typical Scholasticism 
 the system of Erigena was unknown. If either then or at the 
 opening of the modern period it had any influence, this must 
 have been indirectly, through positions of his heretical successors 
 in the twelfth century, quoted by orthodox schoolmen in order 
 to refute them. At last, in 1681, Th. Gale, Dean of York 
 (who also edited the book De Mysteriis), coming upon a manu- 
 script that had escaped destruction, published the first printed 
 edition. With no long delay, the De Divisions Naturae 
 was placed upon the Index of Prohibited Books (1685). 
 Since then, however, the authorities of the Roman Church 
 have decided that, as Erigena's works are so important for the 
 history of Scholastic theology, they may be officially reprinted. 
 Thus the edition that students must now possesss is that of H. 
 J. Floss (first published in 1853) in Migne's " Latin Patrology." 
 There appears to be still important textual work to do; 3 
 though in the edition of Floss good use was made of the 
 materials available at the time. It seems only fair to recognise 
 here a certain liberality; but, as may be gathered from the 
 notes and preliminary essays, the condemnation passed on 
 Erigena's doctrines has been in no way withdrawn. 
 
 The present study aims at giving some account of the 
 philosophy of Erigena as set forth in his principal works. For 
 us, the interest of these is that, in a dark period of European 
 history, they recall the light of the past and prefigure the return 
 to it. Yet, while in speculative power Erigena was probably 
 inferior to no metaphysician that ever lived, we must not expect 
 in the study of him more than historical interest. He cannot, 
 as both late Greek and early modern thinkers still can, furnish 
 us with hints for new paths to follow. Freer though he was 
 than the systematisers properly called " Scholastics " who came 
 
 1 Opp. 439-4- 
 
 2 See J. Draseke, Johannes Scotus Erigena und des sen Gewdhrsmdnner 
 (1902).
 
 JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA 127 
 
 after him, the superincumbent weight of religion was too heavy 
 to be shaken off. The freedom he could enjoy was the spiritual 
 freedom that has been found not out of reach of a prisoner. 
 
 To form an estimate of his intrinsic power, it is instructive 
 to consider the limitations in the philosophical culture of his 
 age. Any History of Philosophy may be consulted for the list 
 of books that he read. He possessed a portion of the Timaeus 
 in the Latin translation of Chalcidius, Aristotle De Interpreta- 
 tions, the Categories with the Isagoge of Porphyry; and, for 
 the basis of encyclopaedic knowledge as then understood, the 
 compendia of Martianus Capella (fifth century), Boethius, 
 Cassiodorus (sixth century), and Isidore of Seville (seventh 
 century). Metaphysical doctrines of Aristotle he knew only 
 at second hand. He was trained of course on the Latin 
 Fathers, and drew much from Augustine's Confessions and 
 City of God. Works ascribed to Augustine on Dialectic and 
 the Ten Categories were used by him. His favourites, how- 
 ever, were the Greek ecclesiastical writers, whom he read in the 
 original. Of these he is especially devoted to the Pseudo- 
 Dionysius (end of the fifth or beginning of the sixth century), 
 and to Maximus the Confessor (seventh century), who 
 depended on Dionysius and on Gregory of Nyssa (fourth 
 century). This Gregory, Erigena in citing him confuses with 
 Gregory Nazianzen. Through this series he derives, on the 
 theological side, from the school of Origen, whose Principles 
 he quotes. 
 
 Perhaps it may be thought that the very narrowness of his 
 training gave him some advantage. The discontinuity of 
 culture in the West was doing what Proclus had seen the need 
 of when he expressed the wish that the mass of ancient writings 
 might for a time be withdrawn from the eyes of men. The 
 ancient structure of thought being broken up, it was easier for 
 some of its separate original ideas to go on to new phases. 
 Thus Erigena could carry forward some of the ideas of Neo- 
 Platonism which, in its genuine Hellenic form, he probably 
 did not know at all to what we now recognise as a more 
 modern stage. While repeating the mystical positions, he 
 gives the impression of being personally very little of a mystic ; 
 and he is more explicitly a pantheist, and is a pantheist of a 
 more naturalistic type, than the ancient Neo-Platonists. On 
 this side he may have been inspired by the poets. As is noted 
 by Prof. W. P. Ker, 1 he quotes the famous lines of Virgil on the 
 
 1 The Dark Ages (1904), p. 163.
 
 128 JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA 
 
 immanent spirit of the world. These were afterwards the 
 favourite quotation of Bruno (who of course cannot have read 
 his mediaeval precursor). To the new faith no positive virtue 
 can be attributed in bringing on this development. Bruno 
 was in conscious opposition to the mediaeval view of life ; and 
 Erigena deliberately puts forward this side of his thought 
 against what he takes for granted are the received opinions. 
 If the faith had any part in the altered point of view, it was 
 that of Sin and Death and Hell in the philosophy of Erigena 
 himself ; these being, according to his interpretation of theo- 
 logical doctrine, the negative element involved in a world- 
 process leading to perfection. 
 
 Although the whole philosophy of Erigena is contained in 
 his chief work, On the Division of Nature, it is worth while 
 first to give a short account of what he found it possible 
 to bring out in his refutation of Gottschalk. Theologically 
 as the topic of predestination was conceived, he appears from 
 the beginning as a philosopher. True philosophy and true 
 religion, he declares, are identical. 1 The formal statement, 
 indeed, is adopted from Augustine ; so that too much stress 
 should not be laid on it taken by itself. But while it might 
 have been applied in either direction, Erigena sets out to 
 argue as a philosopher, and only in a secondary way tries to 
 prove his agreement with the authorities. This gives colour 
 to what in itself is a neutral assertion. 
 
 In his references to Gottschalk, the philosopher descends to 
 the conventional language of theological controversy, 2 and 
 professedly holds himself to be defending the Catholic faith 
 against heresy. What the orthodox representatives of the 
 faith thought of the defence, they were not long in showing. 
 
 And, if Erigena's rhetoric sometimes goes far, it must be 
 remembered that he was protesting against what he himself 
 describes as the " most stupid and most cruel madness " : 
 of the position that part of the human race is, by divine 
 decree, damned to everlasting fire. That there was in his 
 
 1 Liber de Praedestinatione, cap. i. I, 358 A : " veram esse philosophiam 
 veram religionem, con versimque veram religionem esse veram philosophiam." 
 
 2 iii. 7, 369 D : " Merito quippe in oleo atque pice ardere debuisti, qui 
 et lumen caritatis et mysterium praedestinationis perperam docere non 
 timuisti." 
 
 3 i. 4 : " stultissima crudelissimaque insania."
 
 JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA 129 
 
 inner thought no horror of heresy as such is shown by his 
 contention that heresies (including that of Gottschalk) are 
 useful in stirring up inquiry. * 
 
 What had drawn down on Gottschalk the condemnation of 
 the church was not precisely the cruelty of his doctrine. Here 
 the question could only be between lighter and darker shades. 
 The true ground of objection was the exalted and self- 
 confident fanaticism that would have diminished the function 
 of the priest. If there was a " double predestination," by 
 which every man was already assigned to hell or heaven, the 
 mediation of the hierarchy between man and God, though 
 not necessarily made an end of in theory, became in effect 
 of smaller importance. Now Erigena's position was here not 
 less dangerous than Gottschalk's. Making divine predestina- 
 tion indistinguishable from divine foreknowledge, a he is as 
 thoroughgoing a determinist as his antagonist can have been. 
 On the other hand, he abolishes the real hell of the theologians, 
 belief in which was not Gottschalk's heresy. God, he 
 maintains, knows only the real : hence both sin and punishment, 
 being unrealities, fall outside the divine knowledge and have 
 no true causation. s They are to anticipate the later result 
 passing illusions determined by the apparent separation of 
 individualities which are never really separate, and which will 
 in the end return in appearance also to the unity of the whole. 
 
 The practical-minded prelates who had called in a 
 dialectician to help them must have been dismayed to find 
 him, in his opening pages, starting off from the juridical 
 problem of the Roman theologians to speculative metaphysics. 
 For him " the will of God " is identical with the cause of all : 
 and the logic of this does not allow him to think of God as 
 a person among persons, laying down laws and rewarding 
 or punishing their observance or transgression. To necessarian 
 antagonists it must have seemed an evasion when he argued 
 that because the sum of things is a product of the will, which 
 is identical with the being or nature, of God, the predestination 
 in them is not " necessitated " ; since the will of God is free 
 
 >i- 3- 
 
 2 ii. 2, 361 B : " Quod est ergo Deo esse, hoc est ei sapere, et quod e.st 
 ei sapere, hoc est scire, et quod esi scire, id est destinare." Tho 
 qualification that follows is not allowed essentially to affect this position. 
 
 3 This is a general philosophical statement of his doctrine. Cf. iii. 3, 
 366 B: " Peccatum, mors, miseria, a Deo non sunt. Eorum igitur 
 causa Deus non est." 
 
 9
 
 and exempt from all constraint of necessity. What he meant 
 was, that there is no difference between the real nature of 
 things and the nature of God, and that this is caused by no- 
 thing outside itself. The fundamental thought of Erigena 
 about the causal order allows no more place than that of 
 Spinoza for the possibility that anything could be other than 
 it is. Evils, he grants, are also foreseen in a manner, and there- 
 fore predetermined: 1 for, as the position was afterwards de- 
 veloped, there is no actual evil that does not contain an effort 
 after some good, and this is real. Nor does he altogether 
 refuse to employ the term " necessity " in relation to particular 
 things. 2 The thought that love in all things loves God, that 
 is, itself, 8 has received a Spinozistic turn. 
 
 Of course the argument could not remain all through at this 
 high philosophic level; and much trouble had to be taken 
 in manipulating the authorities. Erigena, however, finds 
 general support in the theory of Augustine, derived from Neo- 
 Platonism, that sin by itself has no positive nature; 4 the 
 disappearance of all good being equivalent to the disappearance 
 of all essence. This he developed with rigorous logic on his 
 own lines, and heroically tried to make the Father agree with 
 him in detail. Who, he asks, can think of contradicting 
 Paul or Augustine ? 5 He repeats that sin and death and 
 eternal torments are nothing at all : wherefore they can neither 
 be foreknown nor predestinated. 6 God's foreknowledge or 
 predestination is one with the true and positive essence of 
 things. 
 
 Still, though what is proper to evil may be only privation, 
 there is the appearance to explain. Whence comes the 
 appearance of sin and suffering ? The answer of Erigena is 
 that it comes not from any divinely created nature, but from 
 a perverse motion of the individual will. As the sin arises 
 from the will of each person, so does the punishment. 7 
 Neither sin nor punishment comes from God. 8 The sinner 
 damns himself. And it is not the " nature " of the sinner, 
 but only the perverted will, that sins and is punished. No 
 
 'ii- 4, 5- 
 
 2 ii. 6, 364 B: "Nam si omnium naturarum est necessitas Dei 
 voluntas, erit Dei voluntas naturarum necessitas." 
 
 3 iii. 6, 368 D : " Caritas in omnibus Deum, id est, se ipsam diligit." 
 4 vii. 6. Quoted from De Libero Arbitrio. 
 
 'xi. 3, 7. 8 x. 5. Cf. xv. I. 7 vi. I. 8 x. 3.
 
 JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA 131 
 
 nature, as such, will be punished, and therefore none will 
 be miserable. For every nature either is God or was made 
 by God. Now the creative nature is incapable of misery; 
 and it cannot justly punish the natures which it created. 1 
 In the system of things, the evil will is prevented from finally 
 attaining its end ; and in this its punishment consists. As 
 no nature is punished so also no nature, whether creative or 
 created, punishes. a It is sin itself that punishes sin. There 
 is no separate place of punishment. 8 " Accordingly, if 
 there is no beatitude except life eternal, and eternal 
 life is knowledge of the truth, then there is no beatitude 
 except knowledge of the truth. But whatever is believed of 
 beatitude, the counterpart of this must necessarily be 
 believed of its defect, which is misery. Thus if there is no 
 misery except death eternal, and eternal death is ignorance 
 of the truth, then there is no misery except ignorance of the 
 truth."* 
 
 In this particular treatise, Erigena does not go forward to 
 his doctrine of the restitution of all things at the end of the 
 world-process. No " nature," it is said, is damned ; and all 
 natures, as such, enjoy happiness. Yet, as the appearance of 
 sin and punishment, found in the present life, is not said to 
 cease in the future, " eternal damnation " is formally retained, 
 if in an unorthodox sense. Sin continues to punish itself in 
 the future life. 5 A distinction exists between those that are 
 predestined to life and those that are simply left to undergo, 
 in their individual wills, the penalty of sin. As all have 
 sinned, how is this " election " just ? Why should any, even 
 so, be "reprobate?" 
 
 The theory on which Erigena grounds his reply is that all 
 individual wills were placed in the first man, and therefore can 
 
 1 xvi. I, 418 AB : " Naturam creatricem miseriae esse capacem, 
 dementissimum c-st suspicari. Crea'rix autem natura quali justitia punitura 
 sit naturas, quas ipsa creavit, non invenio. Nulla dehinc natura punietur, 
 non punita non erit misera." Cf. xvi. 5, 423 A : " divina aequitas non 
 punit, quod sua bonitas creare voluit." 
 
 2 xvi. 4. 
 
 3 xvii. 7, 428 D : " Proinde nulla universitatis parte punitur impius, sed 
 sua propria impietate in se ipso." 
 
 4 xvii. 9, 430 AB. 
 
 6 xvi. 6, 423 C : "In onmi enim peccatore simul incipiunt oriri et 
 peccatum, et poena ejus, quia nullum peccatum est, quod non se ipsum 
 puniat, occulte tamen in hac vita, aperte vero in altera, quae est futura."
 
 1 32 JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA 
 
 justly be punished ; for each, as thus prefigured, sinned. 
 That which sinned was not the general nature of man. 1 A 
 different view would make the punishment unjust, for in no one 
 can another's sin be justly punished. And, it is repeated, 
 what sins and is punished was not substantially created by 
 God. a It was, however, involved somehow in the eternal 
 order of things. To the question why the consequences of sin 
 should be healed in some natures and not in others, an answer 
 is assumed that appears formally orthodox. All might justiy 
 have been left in the general mass, but free grace was given to 
 the elect. In the later treatise this is turned into a 
 philosophical doctrine of the necessity that there should be a 
 scale of beings in the universe. Some must be " reprobate," in 
 the sense that all cannot be gods or seraphim. None are 
 deprived of happiness, but there are degrees. 
 
 The foregoing exposition, of course, gives little notion of the 
 medium through which Erigena was obliged to work his way to 
 these theories. Yet it must be obvious that the language of 
 the faith did not well fit them. It is interesting to observe 
 that, rough as the time was, he could still make a point 
 incidentally by urging the less vengeful character of human 
 justice as against the theological hell. Even human laws do 
 not decree that men shall sin, and then punish them for sin- 
 ning ; but threaten punishments in order to deter them if 
 possible, and punish to correct them. 8 
 
 The Division of Nature, to which I now proceed, is in the 
 form of a dialogue between a master and a pupil. This 
 dialogue is not a catechism. The pupil shares equally in the 
 argument, both putting serious objections and from time to 
 time taking up of his own accord the thread of the positive 
 exposition. The conversation, indeed, is not dramatic in the 
 sense that there is collision between different types of thought. 
 The system expounded is that of Erigena and no other. Yet 
 
 1 xvi. 3, 419 BC : " Non itaque in eo peccavit naturae generalitas, secJ 
 uniuscuj usque individua voluntas." 
 
 8 xvi. 3, 420 A : "In nullo quippe vindicatur juste alterius peccatun:. 
 Proinde in nullo natura punitur, quia ex Deo est, et non peccat. Motus 
 autem voluntarius, libidinose utens naturae bono, merito punitur, quia 
 naturae legem transgieditur, quam procul dubio non transgrederetur, si 
 substantialiter a Deo crearetur." 
 
 8 xiv. 5, 412 B: "Quod si ita est in legibus mutabilitate temporum 
 transitoriis, quid putandum fieri in aeternis pietatis justitiaeque immutabili 
 vigore rcfertis ? "
 
 JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA 133 
 
 the form adopted gives the discussion a certain increased 
 liveliness. 1 
 
 The work begins by a broad statement of the " division." 
 " Nature is the general name of all things that are and that are 
 not." Its " parts " or " species " are : first, that which creates 
 and is not created ; second, that which is created and creates ; 
 third, that which is created and does not create ; fourth, that 
 which neither creates nor is created. 2 The first is God as 
 principle ; the fourth is God as end. The second is the 
 intelligible system of causal ideas or reasons by which the 
 world was produced ; the third is the visible world as a 
 system of effects. In reality all are substantially identical : 
 each is the whole viewed in a certain aspect. This is to be 
 understood when they are called parts or species or forms. 
 We are obliged to use the words ; but here they indicate no 
 essential division or demarcation. 
 
 Not all these points are brought out at the very beginning ; 
 but, as will be seen, they are a fair summary of Erigena's 
 metaphysical position. And he transports us rapidly to the 
 centre of it. 
 
 A disquisition on the various kinds of "not-being" 
 introduces the paradox, well-known later to the mystics, that 
 that which surpasses all intellect, as well as that which falls 
 below it, may be said not to be, or to be nothing. This can 
 of course be traced to Plato's idea of the good beyond being ; 
 its antithesis, which is indeterminate matter, being treated as 
 similarly incomprehensible. In the use of this form of paradox, 
 it may be observed, the Neo-Platonists were more cautious 
 than the mystics of the East or of mediaeval Europe. I do 
 not think the assertion is anywhere flatly made by Plotinus, 
 that God, or the One, both " is and is not." The principle of 
 things "is not" any of the particular things that have being; 
 though in another sense (as Erigena also says) it is all of them 
 because it produces them. 
 
 Of the remaining antitheses, the most important for its 
 bearing on the argument that follows is this. In one sense, 
 
 1 This observation has been made by Noack. the German translator of 
 the De Divisione Naturae. See his " Schluss-Abhandlung " (1876) in 
 J. H. v. Kirchmann's Philosophische Bibliothek, Bd. 66. In the preface 
 to the translation, Noack oddly tries to claim Erigena as the first representa- 
 tive of the " Christian German consciousness." As in the case of 
 Shakespeare, the British Islands have a prior claim. 
 
 2 De Divisione Naturae, lib. i. 1.
 
 134 JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA 
 
 things are said to be or not to be according as they exist at a 
 particular place and time among products of generation, or are 
 still latent in their causes. For example, the men that are to 
 be born in the future, though already existent in the creative 
 reasons that prefigure them, are said not to be. In living 
 things the virtue of the seed is said not to be so long as it 
 keeps silence among the secrets of nature : when it has 
 appeared among actual births and growths of animals, or in the 
 flowers and fruits of trees and herbs, it is said to be. 1 On the 
 other hand, according to the philosophers, those things only 
 that are comprehended by intellect are said truly to be ; and 
 these are the reasons of things. Generated things that appear 
 at particular times and places, and are subject to change and 
 corruption, are said not to be. 3 
 
 God cannot be known in essence to any intelligence what- 
 ever, even angelic. What is called knowledge of God is, and 
 must always continue to be, through certain " theophanies." 
 The height of knowledge attainable would be to view all things, 
 whether sensible or intelligible, as manifestations of God. 
 Thus, while in one sense the divine nature is nothing, in 
 another it is all that exists. It not only creates but is created, 
 " because there is nothing essentially beside itself; for it is the 
 essence of all things." 8 A similitude may be found in our 
 intellect, which is said to be (esse) before it arrives at thought 
 and memory, and to be made (fieri) when it has received form 
 from certain phantasies. As it becomes thus formed though 
 in itself without all sensible form ; so the divine essence, itself 
 above intellect, is self-created in all forms of intellect and sense. 
 This self-creation is identical with the creation of things. 
 
 The same positions are more elaborately developed in a 
 discussion on the two kinds of theology, the negative (da-o^a??) 
 and the affirmative (Kara^aTiK-f)). The first shows how nothing 
 can be predicated of the divine essence ; the second, how all 
 things that are can be predicated of it.' Terms like " super- 
 essential," and so forth, positive in form, have a negative 
 meaning. For what is definitely asserted is " not essence " ; 
 what there may be beyond, remains undefined. As there is 
 nothing opposite to God, so no term that has an opposite can 
 
 H. 5. 2 i. 6. 
 
 3 i. 12, 454 A : " creatur autem, quia nihil essentialiter est praeter ipsam ; 
 est enim omnium essentia." 
 
 *i. 13.
 
 JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA 135 
 
 be predicated of him : hence not " being," not " goodness." 
 In reality this negative theology agrees with the affirmative. 
 For the affirmative says, the divinity can be called this, but 
 does not say, it is this properly : the negative says, it is not 
 this, although it can be called this. 1 
 
 The negative theology is carried through in the form of a 
 proof that every one of the Aristotelian categories loses all its 
 sense when applied to the divine nature. 9 Detailed discussion 
 of the category of place in particular leads to its resolution into 
 " definition." Every definition is contained in some scientific 
 discipline, and every discipline in the mind. Hence place 
 exists properly in the mind, 3 and is therefore incorporeal ; as 
 are indeed in the last resort all the ten categories. Erigena 
 then goes on to prove that corporeal matter is nothing but a 
 "composition of accidents." 4 It is, as he says afterwards, put 
 together from incorporeal qualities. 5 If common usage asserts 
 the essence of things to be nothing but their visible and 
 tangible body, that is only as all things known by sense or 
 reason or intellect are predicated of God, though the pure 
 contemplation of truth approves him to be none of these. 6 
 The essence underlying the composition of accidents called 
 body is a certain individual unity (unum quoddam individuum), 
 to be thought of as incorporeal. 
 
 Place and time are inseparable, and without them are no 
 generated things. 7 All essence (ofola) created from nothing 
 is local and temporal : local because it is in some manner, 
 since it is not infinite ; temporal because it begins to be what 
 it was not. 8 The " nothing " from which creation takes place, 
 we are told elsewhere, is indistinguishable from the divine 
 
 'i. 14. 
 
 2 Erigena brings the categories under two genera, motion and rest ; and 
 these again under -rb irav. See i. 22. 
 
 3 i. 28,4756: "Si enim definitio omnis in disciplina est, et omnis 
 disciplina in animo, necessario locus omnis, quia definitio est, non alibi 
 nisi in animo erit." 
 
 4 i. 34- 
 
 5 i. 42,484 C: "Ipsa etiam materies, si quis intentus aspexerit, ex 
 incorporeis qualitatibus copulatur." 
 
 "i. 36. 
 
 7 i. 39,482 A: " Itaque aliquo modo esse, hoc est localiter esse, et 
 aliquo modo inchoasse esse, hoc est temporaliter esse." 
 
 8 i. 45. 487 A.
 
 136 JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA 
 
 nature ; for there is in reality no other nature. What we are 
 to understand here by the creation of particular things is that, 
 before the local and temporal manifestation of an eternal 
 essence, that local and temporal manifestation did not exist ; 
 not that the eternal essence did not exist. The manifestations, 
 however, constitute all that gives determination to the essence. 1 
 
 On matter and body, no new argument seems to be added 
 to what may be found in the Neo-Platonists ; and the dis- 
 tinction between the technical terms has become a little 
 blurred. The conceptions of formed body and of merely 
 potential matter run into one another. The advance is in the 
 tendency, characteristic of British thought more than of modern 
 thought in general, to single out the problem of the external 
 world as a specially interesting one, instead of leaving it to be 
 settled by implication as part of a total philosophical system. 
 This leads to the pointed assertion that there is no " corporeal 
 substance " distinguishable from the immaterial essence of the 
 individual. When the concourse of phenomenal "accidents" 
 is taken away, no reality at all remains in body as such. To 
 Erigena, as to Berkeley, any other view seems almost too 
 absurd for refutation. 2 Of course he does not anticipate 
 Berkeley's empirical treatment of the problem. 
 
 He is fully conscious of the objections that will be raised to 
 his " negative theology," but this does not prevent him from 
 following it out to its last results. Action and passion, he 
 finds, can be predicated of God only by metaphor : " and so 
 in reality God neither acts nor suffers, neither moves nor is 
 moved, neither loves nor is loved." 3 But is not this, the pupil 
 asks, opposed to the authority of Holy Scripture and of the 
 Fathers ? The teacher cannot be unaware how difficult it 
 will be to persuade simple minds, when even the ears of those 
 that seem to be wise are horrified. " Be not afraid," the 
 master replies. " For now we are to follow reason, which 
 investigates the truth of things, and is put down by no 
 authority, nor is in any manner hindered from publicly 
 opening and declaring what the effort of studious inquiry 
 searches into and with labour discovers." 4 While the authority 
 of Holy Scripture is to be followed in all things, it is not to 
 
 1 i. 45, 487 B : " Nam et causa omnium, quae Deus est, ex his, quae ab 
 ea condita sunt, solummodo cognoscitur esse ; nullo vero creaturarum 
 argumento possumus intelligere, quid sit : atque ideo sola haec definitio de 
 Deo praedicatur, quia est, qui plus quam esse est." 
 
 2 i. 47. 3 i. 62, 504 B. 4
 
 JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA 137 
 
 be believed that its words in their obvious meaning always 
 convey the truth : rather, certain similitudes are used in order 
 to raise up our yet rude and infantile senses. Hear the 
 Apostle, who says : " Lac vobis potum dedi non escam." 
 Thus, while the faithful are provided with something definite 
 to give a stay to their thoughts of the divine nature, reason 
 goes beyond and shows that of God nothing can properly be 
 asserted. And yet not irrationally, on the other side, all 
 things from the height to the depth can be asserted. The 
 Creator is even the cause of contraries, in virtue of what he 
 has positively created ; and thus to the opposites of each good 
 their place in nature is allowed till the process shall be com- 
 pleted that ends by abolishing even the appearance of evil. 1 
 After these and other explanations, the disciple feels himself 
 ready, in spite of the terrors of authority, to proclaim his open 
 adherence to what reason clearly establishes; " especially as 
 such things are not to be treated of except among the wise, to 
 whom nothing is sweeter to hear than true reason, nothing 
 more delightful to investigate whilst it is being sought, 
 nothing fairer to contemplate when it is found." 3 
 
 In the remainder of the first book, the antithetic statements 
 are continued. All significant terms carried over from natura 
 condita to natura conditrix, we are told, must be understood 
 as predicated translative only, not proprie. * It is thus when 
 God is said to love and to be loved, to make and to be made. 
 God is without beginning and end, therefore without motion 
 or process, and therefore, since making implies movement, 
 in the proper sense can neither make nor be the object of 
 making. * But if he is conceived as a maker, then his 
 making must be regarded as co-eternal and co-essential with 
 him. Thus understood, his making or action is indistinguish- 
 able from his essence. He alone truly is, and nothing else 
 subsists by itself. 5 What is really signified by the words used 
 in Scripture, such as, to will, to love, to see, to hear, 4s 
 nothing but the ineffable essence, or rather, the more than 
 essence, incomprehensible by all intellect. 6 On the other 
 side, God is rightly said to love because he is the cause of 
 
 H. 66. 2 i. 67 /;/. s i. 68. 4 i. 71. 
 
 9 i. 72, 518 A : " Cum ergo audimus, Deum omnia facere, nil aliud 
 debemus intelligere, quam Deum in omnibus esse, hoc est, essentiam 
 omnium subsistere." 
 
 6 i. 73-
 
 138 JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA 
 
 all love : by this love all things are held together in the 
 whole and are moved towards the end of their desire. In 
 short, every action and passion may be affirmed and denied 
 of him alternately. 1 Yet the denial belongs to a higher 
 order of truth. 2 For the affirmation, as we have seen, is by 
 metaphor (translative) ; the negation, in the proper sense 
 (proprie). And Erigena does not try to evade the conse- 
 quence by insisting on terms like virepdya8os, virepofoios, and so 
 forth. " More than " goodness and essence, he has pointed 
 out, means only " not goodness and essence as understood by 
 us." On the other hand, when the divine essence is conceived 
 as in all things, true reason compels us to say, in the words 
 of Scripture but with no limited reference to the disciples of 
 Christ : " It is not you who love, who see, who move, but 
 the Spirit of your Father." 8 
 
 Still, however, the pupil is troubled by the question, how 
 is this compatible with Holy Scripture and with the Catholic 
 faith ? Philosophically, it has been proved that God is no 
 being along with others, and yet is all beings. But in the 
 Christian doctrine of the Trinity, a series of definite assertions 
 is made about the divine essence. Why this particular selec- 
 tion from all possible assertions ? Whenever the difficulty 
 recurs (and it recurs frequently), it is met with the curt reply 
 that the object of the doctrine seems to have been that 
 Christians might have something distinctive to say. And yet, 
 in detail, Erigena has an elaborate philosophical interpretation 
 of the Christian Trinity. In his historical circumstances this 
 is, of course, perfectly intelligible. He could emphatically 
 declare that reason is by nature prior to authority. True 
 authority is nothing but truth found out by reason and handed 
 down in written tradition for the benefit of posterity. * But 
 the authority referred to was that of the Fathers (with the 
 Scriptures). A philosopher of the ninth century might try 
 to turn them also into philosophers to be respected by the 
 
 J i. 75, 521-2: "Deus itaque per seipsum amor est, per seipsum 
 visio, per seipsum motus : et tamen neque motus est, neque visio, neque 
 amor, sed plus quam amor, plus quam visio, plus quam motus. . . . Amat 
 igitur seipsum et atnatur a seipso, in nobis et in seipso : nee tamen amat 
 seipsum nee amatur a seipso, sed plus quam amat et amatur in nobis et in 
 seipso." And so for the rest. 
 
 2 i. 76, 522 B: "Verius enim negatur Deus quid eorum, quae de eo 
 praedicantur es5e, quam affirmatur esse." 
 
 3 i. 76. M. 69.
 
 JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA 139 
 
 after-world for their insight and discoveries ; but not thus was 
 the " dogmatic slumber " of Europe to be definitively broken. 
 The non-philosophical data of their system were for them its 
 essence; and these no mediaeval thinker could in so many 
 words set aside. Thus Erigena, after scaling the heights of 
 reason, has to plunge again and again into the morass. 
 Fortunately, this side of his thinking can be in great measure, 
 though not wholly, ignored. We see how external it was to 
 him in reality. 
 
 At the opening of the second book, the teacher proves 
 expressly that one identical ground is indicated by all the 
 four terms of his division of nature. The division is not 
 really of genus into forms or species, nor of whole into parts, 
 but proceeds " by a certain intelligible contemplation of the 
 universality by the universality I mean God and creatures." 
 All may finally be brought back to a single individual unity, 
 which is both cause and end. The first term and the fourth, 
 namely, that which creates and is not created, and that 
 which neither creates nor is created, are evidently to be 
 understood only of God, and so refer to one subject. The 
 first indicates the unformed principle of all; the fourth, the 
 end which all things desire and to which all return. These 
 are in themselves indiscernible. Only "in our theory," ac- 
 cording to a difference of aspect, are the principle and the 
 end two and not one. That which takes the second place 
 in the division, namely, the nature that is created and creates, 
 consists of the primordial causes " in created nature " ; from 
 which primordial causes the nature created and not creating 
 flows as effect. The reality indicated by this third term, and 
 that which is indicated by the second, as alike included in 
 " created nature," are there one. Further, Creator and creat- 
 ure, the sole self-subsistent and that which, so far as it is at 
 all, is only a participation in the sole self-subsistent, are in 
 reality the same : so that the reduced pairs are not to be held 
 apart, but coalesce into a single unity. In the present book 
 is to be discussed mainly the procession of creatures from the 
 one first cause though the primordial causes or ideas. l A 
 warning, however, is given that, in view of the connexion of 
 one aspect with another, the topics cannot be strictly limited. 
 
 Certain distinctions of Maximus are first introduced, leading 
 to the position that in man is represented every creature 
 
 J ii. I, 2. Cf. iii. I.
 
 140 JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA 
 
 visible and invisible. l Here we find ourselves involved in 
 mythology. Man, we are told, in accordance with the theory 
 of Maximus, was originally a sexless unity. This was divided 
 into the two sexes and multiplied into diverse varieties in 
 consequence of the fall, but is to be restored to unity in 
 Jesus Christ, " in whom there is neither male nor female." 
 A noteworthy point is the insistence of Erigena that the 
 dignity of human nature has not been lost. Its character as 
 the microcosm of creation is innate and indestructible. 2 The 
 punishment due to the fall was inflicted not in anger, but as a 
 means of bringing man back to his original state of unity. 
 
 A difficulty is raised by the pupil as to the relation between 
 the history in time thus presupposed, and the unity that never 
 ceases to exist while the process including the lapse and the 
 restitution is going on. For by pure intellect the world is even 
 now contemplated not as a changing aggregate of diverse and 
 separate parts, but as a whole immutably subsisting in its 
 reasons. 8 To be quite clear about the solution (here only in 
 part given), it is necessary to keep well in mind a whole series 
 of discussions both in the present and in the later books. 
 Particular statements might otherwise be found misleading. 
 The general result may be thus anticipated. Erigena accepted 
 the Neo-Platonic view of " creation ; " namely, that it does not 
 refer to an order in time, but in " dignity." 4 It is in this sense 
 that the cause of all precedes the ideas, and that these precede 
 the things of time and space. The unity remains in reality 
 unbroken. The whole is always perfect : in the universe, all 
 contraries are harmonised. At the same time, the datum of 
 the Christian revelation is accepted, that there is a total process 
 of finite and temporal things, having a beginning and an end. 
 Before and after this process there is nothing but eternity. 
 Erigena makes no attempt to explain this away, and even 
 declares it rational : yet he nowhere gives distinct philosophical 
 reasons for it. His metaphysical doctrine in truth required 
 
 1 ii. 5 init. : " Est enim ex duabus conditae naturae universalibus 
 partibus mirabili quadam adunatione compositus, ex sensibili namque et 
 intelligibili, hoc est, ex totius creaturae extremitatibus conjunctus." 
 
 2 ii. II, 539 CD: " Non enim in mundo moles corporeas, spatiisque 
 distentas, multiplicesque diversarum partium ejus varietates vera ratio 
 considerat et honorificat, sed naturales et primordiales illius causas, in 
 seipsis unitas atque pulcherrimas, in quas dura finis suus venerit, reversurus 
 erit, et in eis aeternaliter mansurus." 
 
 *ii. 14. 4 ii. 19.
 
 JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA 141 
 
 the view that there is no limit in the past or in the future to 
 the history of appearances ; but, on this side, he never came 
 face to face with the logic of the position. It is enough for 
 him that all the reality of the world is prefigured in the eternal 
 ideas. Process, involving beginning and end, can therefore 
 be treated as really nothing. 1 But, a Neo-Platonist would 
 have said, if the mixture of illusion arises by some necessity, 
 is not the necessity always the same ? What ground then is 
 there for assigning any limit in time to the world of mixture ? 
 Erigena often puts questions bordering on this, but this 
 precise question he never puts. The evasion, however, seems 
 unconscious. And thus, it may be remarked, the opinion is 
 confirmed that he did not know the original Neo-Platonists, 
 whose treatment of the topic had been quite explicit. An 
 attempt to sap orthodoxy by indirect methods and ironical 
 phrases would have been impossible in his age. Where he 
 differs from the received view, he points out the difference and 
 openly defends his own. And, as a matter of course, any 
 view taken is defended on the ground that it is really 
 compatible with the orthodox and catholic faith, however 
 strange it may appear to the vulgar. 
 
 In an elaborate interpretation of the Mosaic cosmogony, 
 contained partly in this and partly in the next book, the sacred 
 writer is found to be setting forth in general the relation 
 between the intelligible and the sensible world, and in detail 
 the elements of physical science as this was understood in 
 Erigena's time. A long disquisition on the Trinity leads to 
 the psychological theory of man. In human nature there is 
 found to be the derivative trinity of ofxria, Svva/j.^, Mpyeia, 
 essentia, virtus, operatic ; again, " c *, X<tyoy, Stdma, in- 
 tellectus, ratio, sensus. These trinities are the same. 
 Here " sense " means internal, not external sense (atee-nan), 
 which refers, as the Greeks say, to the conjunction of body and 
 soul. Within this trinity are not included, as substantial parts 
 of human nature, vital motion and the corruptible body. 
 These are the results of sin ; and, at the resurrection, will not 
 indeed perish, but will lose their separateness and pass over 
 
 1 ii. 21, 561 A : " ea sola, quae aeterna sunt, ante hunc mundum fuerunt, 
 et post eum futura sunt. Et nihil sub sole novum, hoc est, quicquid novum 
 sub hoc mundo est, nihil est ; mundus enim iste lotus novus dicitur, quia 
 aeternus non est, et in tempore ortus est ; ideoque nihil est.' ?
 
 142 JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA 
 
 into the essential trinity of human nature. 1 In paradise, 
 that is, in the archetypal state, man's body was spiritual, as 
 it is to be after the resurrection. 
 
 The psychology here presents nothing scientifically original. 
 The intermediate position, for example, of discursive reason 
 between pure intellect and sense-perception was an established 
 doctrine of later antiquity, transmitted by the Greek 
 Christian writers. The discussion brings us, however, to an 
 interesting metaphysico-theological development. The 
 human soul, it is concluded, being the image of God, 
 resembles God in everything save that its essence is derivative. 
 But between God and his image, asks the pupil, is there not 
 also this difference ; that God knows both that he is and what 
 he is, whereas the soul knows only that it is, not what it is 
 (quid sit) ? a I see, replies the teacher, that you have been 
 deceived by a semblance of true reasoning. For if God is 
 absolutely infinite (universaliter infinitus), he must be 
 indefinable not only by every creature but by himself. How 
 can the divine nature understand what it is, when, as was 
 shown in the first book, it can be brought under no category 
 and is none of the things that exist ? God does not know 
 " what " his nature is, because distinctively it is not anything. 8 
 This paradox of the " divine ignorance," which is the highest 
 wisdom/ is further developed. One corollary is that God does 
 not know evil. If he knew it, evil would have a substantial 
 existence in the nature of things. " For God does not there- 
 fore know the things that are, because they subsist ; but they 
 therefore subsist, because God knows them." 3 That is to say, 
 God knows only in creating determinate existences. The 
 indeterminate, whether above these like the divine essence, 
 or below them like " privation," is unknowable. In God, to 
 know and to do are the same. He knew all things that were 
 to be made before they were made. "And, what is more 
 
 Mi. 23, 571 A: "In hoc enim ternario summae ac sanctae Trinitatis 
 imago expressa cognoscitur." 
 
 a ii. 27. 
 
 3 ii. 28, 589 BC : " Deus itaque nescit se, quid est, quia non est quid ; 
 . . . seipsum non cognoscit aliquid esse." 
 
 4 ii. 28, 594 A: " Ipsa itaque ignorantia summa ac vera est sapientia." 
 Cf. ii. 29, 598 A: " Et in quantum se nescit in his, quae sunt, compre- 
 hendi, in tantum se scit ultra omnia exaltari ; atque ideo nesciendo seipsum, 
 a seipso melius scitur." 
 
 8 ii. 28, 596 B.
 
 JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA 143 
 
 wonderful, all things therefore are because they have been 
 foreknown. For the essence of all things is no other than the 
 knowledge of all things in the divine wisdom." 1 By an applica- 
 tion of these positions, as we have seen, Erigena thought to 
 banish the doctrine that God predestines to evil. The 
 knowledge which God has of all that he creates does indeed 
 carry with it predetermination; since the divine knowledge 
 necessarily causes the existence of the things known (or is 
 those things) : but evil, as a falling-off from the reality of 
 nature, is outside this knowledge. 
 
 Of theology, says the master, the part called negative 
 (diro<t>a.TiK-?i) has now again been set forth; in which it is 
 shown that God is none of the things that are and that are 
 not, and knows not himself as any of them ; " which species 
 of ignorance surpasses all knowledge and understanding." 9 
 Under the head of the theology called affirmative 
 (KarcufxiTiicfi) we are offered further developments on the 
 Trinity. The end of all that can be uttered about the Trinity 
 in Unity, it is observed, is merely that we may have something to 
 say in praise of what is ineffable. 8 Incidentally we meet with 
 a modification of a " Johannine " thought. If human nature 
 does not first know and love itself, how can it desire the 
 knowledge of God ? 4 The book ends with the reaffirmation 
 that the " primordial causes," which the Father created in the 
 Son, are " what the Greeks call ideas." They are also called 
 predeterminations (irpoopl<rfj.a.Ta) or predestinations, or divine 
 volitions (# 6e\^fj.ara) ; and are said to be the principles 
 of all things because all objects of sense or thought, whether 
 in the visible or in the invisible world, subsist by partici- 
 pating in them. 6 
 
 The third book is specially devoted to the consideration of 
 the nature which is created and does not create; but the 
 desirability is recognised of first setting forth some descending 
 order of the causes among themselves, though this can have 
 no absolute philosophical validity. 
 
 The order to be adopted is that of St. Dionysius the 
 Areopagite in his treatise De divinis Nominibus. This order 
 is discerned in the mind that contemplates rather than in 
 the causes themselves. 6 As it depends on our choice 
 
 l n. 20, 559 B. *a 30, 599 c. *n. 35. *n. 32. 
 
 6 iii. I, 624 A : " Ipsae siquidem primae causae in seipsis unum sunt, et 
 simplices, nullique cognito ordine definitae, aut a se invicem segregatae, 
 hoc enim in effectibus suis patiuntur."
 
 i 4 4 JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA 
 
 whether we begin with one or another of the spaces into which 
 a circle is divided by its radii, so, in considering the primordial 
 causes, we may begin where we like. The choice has been 
 made to begin with goodness as a principle. But this 
 choice, says the pupil, cannot be altogether arbitrary. Nor 
 is it, the teacher concedes : but he desires to avoid any 
 rash promise of satisfaction, finding that he has " scarcely a 
 place among the last followers of the great philosophers." 1 
 If possible, however, he would escape the doom of the servant 
 who neglected his one talent. He will therefore venture an 
 explanation why goodness comes first in the series. 
 
 The explanation is that things are because it was good that 
 they should be : it is not their mere being that makes them 
 good. Goodness being entirely taken away, no essence 
 remains. And it is not conversely true that, essence being 
 entirely taken away, no goodness will remain. For there 
 is a goodness beyond that of " beings " ; which are so called 
 because they fall under definite forms of intellect or sense. 
 Thus goodness is more general than essence. The things that 
 " are not " (in any circumscribed mode) are better than the 
 things that " are " (as thus defined). 2 
 
 Here Erigena has thought his way back to a metaphysical 
 position of Plotinus. The method which he follows of 
 descending from the more general to the more special is carried 
 through on the model fixed for the latest dependents on Neo- 
 Platonism by Proclus. As goodness is more general than 
 essence, so essence is more general than life, and life 
 than reason. This, as has been said, is not in strictness 
 true of the primordial causes themselves; but it has 
 its application to their effects as mentally contemplated. 
 For in goodness participate things that are and that are not, 
 but in essence only things that are ; in essence things living 
 and not living, but in life only things living; in life things 
 rational and irrational, but in reason only things rational. All 
 the "distributions," we are always to bear in mind, are 
 united " by a certain ineffable unity." 8 
 
 As with Proclus, so with Erigena, the outward progression 
 has its complement in a return of all things to their source. * 
 The difference is, on the one side, that for Proclus the relation 
 
 Mil. I, 627 A. 2 iii. 2. 3 iii. 3. 
 
 4 iii. 4, 632 C : " iterumque per secretissimos naturae poros occultissimo 
 meatu ad fontem suum redeunt."
 
 JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA 145 
 
 of principle to end does not express itself by a total process in 
 time ; on the other side, that for Erigena the pantheistic thought 
 is more explicit. The cause of all is all. * An analogue is 
 our own intellect, which remains intrinsically invisible and 
 incomprehensible while manifesting itself by certain signs. 
 Hence in both cases a whole series of coincident contraries : 
 " appearance of the non-apparent," and so on. 
 
 The Christian dogma of creation however, brings back 
 the difficulty : How is the eternal existence of all things 
 in the Wisdom of God compatible with their beginning 
 to be and ceasing to be in time ? How can that be eternal 
 which was not before it was made? The supposition of a 
 formless matter in which temporal things are generated from 
 their eternal causes offers no way of escape, since this too 
 has no origin outside God, but is among the things divinely 
 predetermined. 
 
 The teacher cannot promise a complete solution ; but he 
 will go as far as thought, divinely illumined, permits, and 
 then, when the mind has reached its limit, confess ignorance. a 
 After some further preliminaries on the existence of the 
 causes, ideas or reasons of things in the Word of God, which 
 may also be called the Reason and Cause, the answer already 
 hinted at is given more circumstantially. If you take 
 away their eternal causes from the things that begin to be 
 and cease to be in time, these are nothing, Their real ex- 
 istence is identical with their ideal pre-existence. 8 As pre- 
 existent, they are both " made," in the all-inclusive Word, 
 and eternal. As temporal, they are partly real (having eternal 
 causes), partly unreal. The pupil, however, cannot all at once 
 get over the apparent opposition, and restates the difficulty in 
 a pointed form : " The things that are eternal never begin to 
 be, never cease to subsist, and there was no time when they 
 were not, because they always were ; but the things that have 
 been made have received a beginning of their making." 4 
 Moreover, that which has begun to be must inevitably cease 
 
 1 iii. 4, 633 A: "Ambit enim omnia, et nihil intra se est, in quantum 
 vere est, nisi ipsa, quia sola vere est." Cf 634 A : " quae ineffabilis 
 diffusio et facit omnia, et fit in omnibus, et omnia est." 
 
 2 iii. 7. 
 
 ''iii. 8, 640 AB : " Nihil enim aliud nos sumus, in quantum sumus, nisi 
 ipsae raliones nostrae aeternaliter in Deo substitutae." 
 
 4 iii. 9, 647 C. 
 
 10
 
 i 4 6 JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA 
 
 to be. It is not conceivable that the master has in view 
 to defend the position of some who think that the visible 
 creation, or part of it, will last for ever in the future 
 and thus maintain a kind of " semi-eternity," in spite 
 of its having had a beginning. Rather it may be con- 
 jectured that he follows those who hold that, while the 
 whole world will be dissolved, its incomposite nature will 
 survive; this being incorruptible because incorporeal. The 
 teacher confesses that he did once accept the false opinions 
 referred to ; but he has retraced his steps. Then the pupil 
 goes on to say that the views now commended to him on 
 the authority of St. Dionysius the Areopagite are in- 
 comparably deeper and more wonderful than his former 
 ones. What he had held was that God alone is without 
 beginning, and that all things else are not eternal but have 
 been made. The new position is "yet unheard of and un- 
 known not only to me but to many and almost to all. For 
 if it is thus, who would not straightway break forth into this 
 speech and cry out : God therefore is all, and all things are 
 God ! Which will be esteemed monstrous even by those who 
 are thought to be wise." l Let the doubt then be resolved, 
 so that he may not sink back in thickest darkness after the 
 hope has been raised of the dawn of light to be. And let 
 the way of reasoning be begun with natural examples, " which 
 none resists unless blinded by excess of foolishness." 
 
 The example given by the teacher is from the science of 
 arithmetic, interpreted according to a speculative idea which 
 he traces to Pythagoras. 3 Unity, or the " monad," eternally 
 contains in itself, as a system of latent "reasons," infinite 
 number and all the rules by which numbers are combined. 
 Number is thus, in analogy with creative deity, at once maker 
 and made ; maker as the monad, made in all determinate 
 combinations of numbers. The monad as principle is 
 identical with the monad as end, into which all the numbers 
 produced return when analysed. Its existence as unity does 
 not cease though the production of plurality ; and all that it 
 contains and makes is eternal like -itself, not having its origin 
 from a beginning in time. It is itself one eternal product of 
 the deity, to whose action it furnishes a natural analogy. Of 
 arithmetic as of the other natural arts, the created and human 
 
 1 iii. 10, 650 CD. 
 2 iii. 11,652 A.
 
 JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA 147 
 
 intellect is not the maker but the finder, though it finds them 
 within itself, where they are produced, and not without. 1 
 
 This is only illustration. The direct reply is a restatement 
 of the principle of immaterialism already affirmed. 11 The 
 things that begin and cease to be have their true being in 
 their " primordial causes," which are eternal. As determined 
 to a particular time and place, they are only appearances. 
 To the difficulty that time and place too must have their 
 primordial causes in the Word of God, so that even " accidents " 
 do not fall outside the Word, the concession is made that here 
 is a mystery of which the mode is beyond investigation. All 
 is no doubt predetermined, including what are to us accidents. 
 Thus these too have corresponding to them a reality; but, 
 difficult as the distinction may be, this reality is not to be 
 confounded with the beginning and ending and spatial limita- 
 tion of the appearances under which the causes of things are 
 manifested. An illustration may be found in the incorporeal 
 virtue of the seed, manifested in all that grows out of it, from 
 grain to harvest. And, if any one objects that this requires a 
 matter to manifest itself in, the reply is, that every manifesta- 
 tion can be resolved into something in the last resort 
 immaterial, such as colour, odour, and so forth. 8 
 
 Thus it is God himself who is created in all that exists. 
 There is no being or not-being outside his essence. And 
 within the divine nature there is nothing that is not co-essential 
 with it. We must not conceive of God and the creature as 
 two things standing apart from one another, but as one and 
 the same. 4 " Eternal, he begins to be, and immoveable he is 
 moved to all things, 5 and in all things he is made all." And 
 this, the teacher explicitly declares, is not said of the Incarna- 
 tion of the Word in human form, but of the universal theophany 
 
 Mil. 12, 6586. 
 
 2 iii. 14, 663 A : " MAG. Recordarisne, quid de ipsa materia in primo 
 libro inter nos est confectum, ubi ex intelligibilium coitu ipsam fieri 
 disnutavimus ? Quantitates siquidem et qualitates, dum per se incorporeae 
 sint, in unum vero coeuntes informem efficiunt materiam, quae adjectis 
 formis coloribusque incorporeis in diversa corpora movetur. Disc. 
 Recorder sane. MAG. Ex rebus itaque incorporalibus corpora 
 nascuntur." 
 
 8 in. 1 6. 
 
 4 iii. 17, 678 BC : " Proinde non duo a seipsis distantia debemus 
 intelligere Deum et creaturam, sed unum et id ipsum." 
 
 B Movement, as with Aristotle, means change in general.
 
 148 JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA 
 
 which has neither cause nor matter nor occasion outside the 
 divine nature. 
 
 This leads to that " identification of contraries " which 
 fascinated later pantheists. The two extremes of super- 
 essential reality and not-being are alike formless ; and in each alter- 
 nately, according to the point of view, may be seen the source of all 
 that is manifested in the appearances of the visible world. 
 Are they not then equally good names for the indefinable cause 
 which is all and yet nothing? The Scripture seems to bear 
 this out. " His light," says the Psalmist, " is as darkness." 1 
 
 Not only are the extremes identified, but the mean that is, 
 the graded variety of existing things is declared identical with 
 both. "Accordingly the divine goodness considered ?s above 
 all is said not to be, and to be nothing at all ; yet in all things 
 it both is and is said to be, because it is the essence of the 
 whole universality." Thus considered, as having passed from 
 " nothing " to " something," every category may be applied to 
 it. 2 In descending the scale of production it is therefore made 
 apparently the basest and vilest things ; and to say this can 
 offend those only who are unwilling to see the clear light of 
 wisdom : for to the universe as a whole there is nothing vile or 
 base. God is now all in all, and is not merely to be made so 
 at the end of a process in time. 8 
 
 When Erigena comes down from metaphysics to physics, he 
 has to educe such science as he can from the account of the 
 six days' work in the Book of Genesis. Throughout the 
 exposition, he insists that the six days are not to be under- 
 stood of an order in time, but of an intelligible order 
 of causation. The visible world issued as a whole, and not 
 part by part, from its invisible primordial causes. * Here again 
 
 1 Hi. 19. 
 
 2 iii. 19, 681 D. Cf. 68iA: " Dum ergo incomprehensibilis intellighur, 
 per excellentiam nihilum non immerito vocitatur. At vero in suis 
 theophaniis incipiens apparere, veluti ex nihilo in aliquid dicitur procedere, 
 et quae proprie super omnem essentiam existimatur, proprie quoque in 
 onmi essentia cognoscitur, ideoque omnis visibilis et invisibilis creatura 
 theophania, id est divina apparitio potest appellari." 
 
 3 iii. 20, 683 B: " Ac sic ordinate in omnia proveniens facit omnia, 
 et fit in omnibus omnia, et in se ipsum redit, revocans in se omnia, et dum 
 in omnibus fit, super omnia esse non desinit." 
 
 4 .ii. 27, 699 C : "de causis adbuc incognitis, ac veluti formis adhuc 
 carentibus omnium rerum visibilium conditio, nullis temporum spatiis vel 
 locorum interpositis, simul in formas numerosque locorum et
 
 JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA 149 
 
 it is explicitly declared that the cause and the effect are in 
 reality identical. 1 Against those who, professedly founding 
 themselves on Scripture, say that the heaven with its stars, the 
 ether with the planets, the air with its clouds and winds and 
 lightnings, the water and its fluctuant motion, earth likewise with 
 all its herbs and trees, are without soul and every kind of life, 
 he cites Plato and his disciples ; a who not only assert a 
 general life of the world, but also confess that no bodily thing 
 is deprived of life, and have had the hardihood to give to this 
 life, whether general or special, the name of soul. This 
 position he defends at length, arguing that the " most universal 
 soul," or " most general life," penetrates all that exists, even 
 what appear to our senses to be dead bodies ; and this it does 
 in a manner of which the all-diffusive power of the solar rays 
 furnishes an imperfect similitude. 
 
 While protesting that he would avoid the appea : i < e 
 " following the sect of Plato," 3 he again takes up the position 
 that man is a microcosm, uniting in himself the intellect of 
 angelic spirits (in terms of the Christian transformation of 
 Platonism) with the discursive reason peculiar to himself and 
 the sensitive and nutritive life of the animal and of the living 
 germ that is in all things. 4 So far as this book is concerned, 
 he seems to be on the way to a doctrine like that of the 
 Arabian philosophers who held that the only human immor- 
 tality is the immortality of the race and its general mind. At 
 least in explaining the unlikenesses among men, he brings in 
 no intrinsic difference between one human soul and another, 
 but lays down the position that all manifested unliknesses are 
 due to accidents of time and place and circumstance ; the 
 " substantial form " of human nature being one and the same 
 in all. 5 We may infer, however, from portions of the later 
 
 temporum producta est." Cf. 31, 709 D: " ipsa natura simul 
 in omnes coepit currere creaturas, nee ulla alteram locorum seu temporum 
 numeris seu spatiis praecessit." 
 
 1 iii. 28, 704 B : " Aliter enim in causis, aliter in effectibus una eademque 
 res theoriae speculationibus intimatur." Cf. 25, 693 AB. 
 
 2 iii. 36, 728 A: "Plato, philosophorum summus, et qui circa eum 
 sunt." 
 
 3 iii. 37, 732 D. 
 
 4 iii. 37, 733 B: " non immerito dicitur homo creaturarum omnium 
 offifina, quoniam in ipso universalis creatura continetur. Intelligit quidem 
 ut angelus, ratiocinatur ut homo, sentit ut animal irrationale, vivit ut 
 germen, corpore animaque subsistit, nullius creaturae expers." 
 
 5 iii. 27, 703 BC.
 
 1 5 o JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA 
 
 books, that he retained in theory as well as in dogmatic belief 
 something of the metaphysical " individualism " of his Platonic 
 predecessors, Hellenic or Christian. Whatever his doctrine 
 may be, it is applied equally to the souls of animals. On 
 purely philosophical grounds, he decides that these do not 
 perish with their bodies. Incidentally he points out the 
 difficulty of reconciling the absolute unlikeness assumed 
 between man and brute with the evidences that have been 
 collected of animal intelligence. 1 The main argument, how- 
 ever, is from the relation of species to genus. The highest 
 genus in which living things participate is the primordial life 
 or soul. Now if the species included under this perish in part, 
 the whole loses its integrity. If, for example, the only species 
 left were to be man, that would not be the preservation but the 
 ruin of the genus. And if the genus is a substantial unity, how 
 can it perish ? By participation in this, then, the life or soul 
 of every species must be supposed to remain after the destruction 
 of the particular bodies it governs. Erigena recognises that the 
 authority of eminent Fathers is against him : but he conjectures 
 that they put forward in public the doctrine they taught, not 
 because they were careless about the investigation of truth, but 
 in order to deter the unwise among men from imitating 
 irrational animals. With this aim, they represented them as 
 viler than they are. And indeed, as not having the distinctive 
 characteristics of man, the lower animals are not fit objects of 
 human imitation, though they no less contain a reality that is 
 imperishable. 
 
 The fourth and fifth books, comprising nearly half the entire 
 work, treat of " the return of all things into that nature 
 which neither creates nor is created." 2 The difficulty 
 of this, the master says, is such that, in comparison with it, 
 what has gone before may seem plain sailing in an open sea. 
 Yet, in spite of all the syrtes and the hidden rocks that 
 beset the passage, he ventures to promise, under divine 
 guidance, safe arrival in port. The disciple is eager to con- 
 tinue the voyage ; declaring that reason experienced in this 
 deep (ratio perita hujus ponti) gains more delight from the 
 exercise of virtue in the secret channels of the divine ocean 
 than from the smooth and leisurely course that is insufficient 
 for the disclosure of its strength. 
 
 Modern. readers too will find this second part more difficult 
 
 39.
 
 JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA 151 
 
 and complex than the first ; and they will not fail to recognise 
 the particular syrtes and hidden rocks that are the cause. 
 In Erigena's statement, however, there is no irony. We 
 must not forget that, deeply as he sought to transform it, he 
 accepted the account of man's creation and fall and redemption 
 given by the Christian creed as in some sense a divine 
 revelation. Thus he takes for granted that a theory of reality 
 can be conveyed by a rational interpretation of the faith. 
 This makes the genuinely, if not completely, philosophical 
 character of his theorising the more remarkable ; as appears 
 especially when it is cleared (so far as possible) of the 
 Scriptural and patristic developments in which it is frequently 
 immersed. 
 
 A profound thought that presents itself detached from these 
 is the idea of a " dialectic " running through nature. The 
 art which divides genera into species and resolves species 
 into genera, is found to be no mere human contrivance, but to 
 have been established in the nature of things. Thence it 
 was discovered by the wise and turned to account for its use 
 as an instrument of investigation. l It hardly needs pointing 
 out how on one side this suggests the Hegelian Dialectic ; on 
 the other, Mill's " Natural Kinds." 
 
 The principle laid down for the interpretation of Scripture 
 is not in itself different from that of many orthodox 
 Fathers and Doctors. There was general agreement that 
 the sacred writings may yield the utmost variety of senses. a 
 Whether the particular interpretation adopted was, in the 
 opinion of ecclesiastical authority, legitimate, depended not 
 on the method but on the result. If the most strained and 
 violent allegorising yielded orthodox doctrine, no fundamental 
 objection was raised. Criticism, in our sense, was as com- 
 pletely absent as in the ascription of documents to apostolic 
 authors by the early Church. And often, so far as I am 
 aware, nothing would be said against Erigena's procedure. A 
 case in point may, I suppose, be found in his development 
 of the Pauline pneumatology in the sense of the Neo-Platonic 
 antithesis between body and immaterial soul and mind, and 
 the reading of this into the double account of creation in 
 
 1 iv. 4. 
 
 2 iv. 5, 749 C : " Est enim multiplex et infinitus divinorum eloquiorum 
 intellectus. Siquidem in penna pavonis una eademque mirabilis ac pulchra 
 innumerabilium colorum varietas conspicitur in uno eodemque loco 
 ejusdem pennae portiunculae."
 
 152 JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA 
 
 the Book of Genesis. Here modern criticism detects two 
 documents, in one of which man was described as created 
 with the animals but last of the series, in the other as 
 separately created before them. Erigena sees quite plainly 
 the facts that are the basis of the modern theory ; but regard- 
 ing the whole as revealed, finds in the double account an 
 indication in what manner man is an animal and a spirit, and 
 both at once. 
 
 The heterodoxy comes in when he approaches his theory of 
 the restitution of all things. To this the fourth book is mainly 
 preliminary, giving an interpretation of the Creation and Fall ; 
 but soon we perceive his preoccupation with the theory already 
 in part set forth in the De Praedestinatione, that no real nature 
 is to be finally lost. 1 As this theory logically requires, every 
 reality, of whatever kind, is held to be prefigured in the 
 creation. The conclusion is here already involved : all that 
 exists being predetermined, the process must end in the 
 complete preservation of all reality in its perfection for ever. 
 There is, for Erigena, a beginning of process in time; but 
 there is no historical fall of man. Both the devil and man, 
 as he puts it, fell without temporal interval. 3 There was 
 no primeval perfection of human nature in a local paradise, 
 but only in the archetypal idea. There was no actual or 
 appreciable time during which man lived without sin. 8 
 His " fall " consisted in descent from the state of an idea, 
 prefigured in the divine mind, to the conditions of birth. 
 
 Even man's body, so far as it is truly body, " subsists in its 
 reasons." 4 It was not sin that made an animal of man, 
 but nature. 8 As has been said, God created every creature, 
 both visible and invisible, in man. The reality or substance of 
 the human mind is not other than its notion in the divine 
 mind. 6 And, as the internal notion of things in the human 
 mind is the substance of those things of which it is the notion, 
 so the notion by which man knows himself is his substance. r 
 
 1 iv. 5, 760 C : " Non enim divinae justitiae est visum, ex eo, quod fecit, 
 quidquam perire, praesertim cum non ipsa natura peccaverit, sed 
 perversa voluntas, quae contra naturam rationabilem irrationabiliter 
 movetur." 
 
 2 iv. 20. 3 iv. 15 ff. 4 iv. 5, 759 B. 5 iv. 7, 763 A. 
 
 6 iv. 7 768 B : " Possumus ergohominem definite sic : Homo est notio 
 quaedam intellectualis in mente divina aeternaliter facta." 
 
 7 iv. 7, 770 A.
 
 JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA 153 
 
 The notion of man in the divine mind, and the notion which 
 he has of himself, though both called " substances," are not 
 to be understood as two, but as one substance viewed in a 
 twofold manner. * The existence of the human mind, and 
 its self-knowledge, are coincident. And the knowledge it 
 has, even if only of its own ignorance, suffices to prove the 
 existence of the self. In a remarkable passage, Erigena, after 
 Augustine, gives vigorous personal expression to that notion 
 of " consciousness " which had gradually become clear to the 
 ancient schools, and which was afterwards to be made by 
 Descartes the methodical beginning of a new movement. a 
 
 The self-knowledge of man in the primordial causes before 
 time is general, not of any particular human mind. Human 
 nature is there a unity without distinction of individuals. 8 The 
 self-knowledge of the particular human mind is a knowledge 
 of itself in relation to time and place, and does not exist 
 before these. 
 
 Human and even animal sense, Erigena says with Augustine, 
 is superior to the greatest splendour of the visible world 
 regarded as devoid of life. 4 As we have seen, however, he 
 does not in his own theory so regard it. The antithesis here 
 is between sense and body in abstraction. The position to 
 
 a i v ' 7 77^-1: "Disc. Duas igitur substantias hominis intelligere 
 debemus unam quidem in primordialibus causis generalem, alteram in 
 earum effectibus specialem. MAG. Duas non dixerim, sed unam dupliciter 
 intellectam. Aliter enim humana substantia per conditionem in in- 
 tellectualibus perspicitur causis, aliter per generationem in effectibus." 
 
 2 iv. 9, 776 B: " Scio enim me esse, nee tamen me praecedit scientia 
 mei, quia non aliud sum, et aliud scientia, qua me scio ; et si nescirem 
 me esse, non nescirem ignorare me esse : ac per hoc, sive scivero, sive 
 nescivero me esse, scientia non carebo ; mihi enim remanebit scire 
 ignorantiam meam. Et si omne, quod potest scire se ipsum nescire, non 
 potest ignorare se ipsum esse ; nam si penitus non esset, non sciret seipsum 
 nescire : conficitur omnino esse omne, quod scit se esse, vel scit se nescire se 
 e?se." 
 
 3 ' lv - 9> 776-7 ' " Nam in ilia primordiali et general! totius humanae 
 naturae conditione nemo seipsum specialiter cognoscit, neque propriam 
 mtitiam sui habere incipit ; una en : m et generalis cognitio omnium est ibi, 
 solique Deo cognita. Illic namque omnes homines unus sunt, ille profecto 
 ad imaginem Dei factus, in quo omnes creati sunt." 
 
 4 iv. IO, 784 D : " A T am si melior est anima vermiculi, ut sanctus Pater 
 Augustinus edocet, quam corpus solare totum mundum illustrans ; vita 
 siquidem extrema, qualiscunque sit, primo corpori pretiosissimoque 
 dignitate essentiae praeponitur : quid mirum, si omnia totius mundi cor- 
 pora humano sensui postponantur. "
 
 154 JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA 
 
 be enforced is that the whole soul, and not merely its higher 
 part, called spirit or mind or intellect, was made in the image 
 of God. This follows from its being all in the whole and all 
 in every part, not only of the body but of itself. For (as had 
 been shown in the ancient psychology) no mental " faculty " is 
 isolated ; in each the whole soul expresses itself. " But in 
 two modes above all we know the human soul made in the 
 image of God : first, because, as God is diffused through all 
 the things that are, and can be comprehended by none of 
 them, so the soul penetrates the whole instrument of its body, 
 yet may not be enclosed by it ; in the second place, because, 
 as of God is predicated only being, but in no manner is it 
 defined what he is, so the human soul is only understood to be, 
 but what it is neither itself nor other creature understands." 1 
 
 The material and external body, due to sin, is as a kind of 
 vestment of the internal and " natural," identified by Erigena 
 with the " spiritual," body. " For it is moved through times 
 and ages, suffering increase and loss of itself, while that 
 remains ever immutably in its internal state." 2 Corporeal 
 individuality is treated as one of the secondary things befal- 
 ling man " from the qualities of corruptible seeds." 8 And yet 
 of this too there is something that remains. When the cor- 
 ruptible body is dissolved, a certain form of it endures in the 
 soul, and preserves a relation to the material elements into 
 which the body has been decomposed.* In the creation, the 
 consequences of sin were provided for before it happened. 6 
 The bad will precedes the act : hence man was never without 
 sin, as he never subsisted without mutable will. For even the 
 irrational mutability itself of free-will, because it is the cause 
 of evil, is necessarily a kind of evil. 6 
 
 Thus in the original " paradise " interpreted as meaning, 
 not a place, but ideal human nature created as a whole 
 everything was prefigured. By the man placed in paradise 
 was meant intellect (vovs) ', by the woman, sense 
 
 1 iv. ii, 788 A. 2 iv. 12, 802 A. 
 
 3 iv. 12, 801 CD : " Universaliter autem in omnibus corporibus humanis 
 una eademque forma communis omnibus intelligitur, et semper in omnibus 
 incommutabiliter slat. Nam innumerabiles differentiae, quae eidem formae 
 accidun:, non ex ratione primae conditionis, sed ex qualitatibus corrup i- 
 biiium seminum nascuntur." 
 
 4 iv. 13. 5 iv. 14. 
 
 8 iv. 14, 808 C: "Nam et ipsa irrationabilis mutabilitas liberae vulun- 
 tatis, quia causa mali est, nonnullum malum esse necesse est." 
 
 7 iv. 16, 815 D.
 
 JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA 155 
 
 This interpretation is adopted from Ambrose ; who, as 
 Erigena thinks, follows Origen, though he does not cite him 
 by name. In the allegory is to be understood sometimes 
 "internal," sometimes "external," sense. External sense, 
 however, is not a part of the primal human nature, but is 
 superinduced. Evil (as Erigena uniformly teaches) has no 
 existence in itself, but is found only where falsity has its seat ; 
 and the recipient of error is no other than the external sense, 
 by which the parts of human nature properly so called are 
 deceived. 1 This is indicated by the "tree of knowledge," 
 which is a mixed thing. So far as it is good, it comes from 
 God : so far as it is evil, it is in reality nothing, and can be 
 referred to no cause. 
 
 The difference between the good and evil in the mixture 
 may be seen by considering, for example, a golden vase 
 adorned with gems, viewed by one who is wise and by an 
 avaricious man. The former will find the nature of the 
 phantasy all good, referring the beauty of the vase simply to 
 the praise of the creator, and will feel no temptation of personal 
 desire ; the latter will be inflamed with cupidity, " the roct of 
 all evil." 2 The meaning of the forbidden fruit is that intellect 
 and sense (figured as the man and the woman) are prohibited 
 from the undiscriminating appetite for good and evil, infixed 
 in imperfect souls from the delight in the beauty of material 
 things. 8 Before the visible creature is delighted in, the praise 
 ought to be referred to the Creator. When man through 
 pride disregarded this due order, when he placed the love and 
 knowledge of the Creator after the external beauty of the 
 material creature, he took the way to perdition. 4 
 
 The theory derived by Erigena from Maximus, and here 
 again introduced, 3 that if man had not fallen he would have 
 been multiplied like the angels, without the union of the sexes, 
 is declared by the Catholic editor to be theologically heterodox. 
 
 1 iv. 16, 826 B: " Nulla enim alia pars humanae naturae falsitatis 
 errorem recipit praeter sensum exteriorem, siquidem per ipsum et interior 
 sensus, et ratio, ipse etiam intellectus, saepissime fallitur." 
 
 2 iv. 16. 
 
 3 iv. 1 8. For all that, Erigena can recognise that the beginning of 
 knowledge is in sensible experience. Cf. iv. 25,8556: "omne studiuni 
 sapientiae, omnisque mentis conceptio, puraque veritatis cognitio a sensi- 
 bus corporis auspicium sumunt, ab inferioribus ad superiora, et ab exteriori- 
 bus ad interiora ratione gradatim ascendente." 
 
 4 iv. 22. 6 iv. 23.
 
 i 5 6 JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA 
 
 Philosophically the interesting point is, whether the archetypal 
 unity of the human race, as Erigena understands it, excludes 
 real individuality. Now the reference to multiplication 
 (whatever the theory may mean for a theologian) evidently 
 decides against this view. Since the species, even if retaining 
 its archetypal perfection, is to be thought as multiplying itself, 
 it must have implicitly contained the individuals, ideally pre- 
 figured. 
 
 The individualism which, in the last resort, has not been 
 expelled from Erigena's system by his stress on the primal 
 reality of genus and species, becomes most marked in the 
 fifth book. Here, after the preliminaries of the fourth book, a 
 full and positive theory is expounded of the return of all 
 things to their principle, which is also their end. In what is 
 said in Genesis of the "tree of life," the return of human 
 nature to its original state is found to be indicated. l This 
 return of man (in whose nature all creatures are included) is to 
 be for ever. 2 Things visible and invisible, in spite of their 
 apparent departure, always indeed remain in their original 
 unity. When they have finally returned and are one in the 
 divine nature, "as now and ever they are one in their 
 causes," no nature further will be produced : whence the 
 divine nature into which they return is rightly said not to 
 create ; as it is said not to be created because it is the cause 
 which has no principle beyond. 8 
 
 Arguments for the return are first drawn from sensible 
 things. The rhythm alike of astronomical and of vital motion 
 furnishes an analogy with which a total movement of the whole 
 from beginning to end appears to be in agreement. The 
 words principium and finis, of course, make it easy to identify 
 on the one hand the temporal beginning with that which is 
 held to be the ever-present cause or principle of all movement, 
 and on the other hand the final cause or object of desire with 
 a temporal end in which things attain rest. The metaphysical 
 principle being conceived as identical with the end, the notion 
 is further suggested of a corresponding identity between the 
 primal and the ultimate state of the universe. Yet, in this 
 
 2 v. 2, 862 D: "nunquam ad egestatem temporalium rerum, quae 
 omnino cum mundo peribunt, reversurus, totus in Deum transiturus, et 
 unum in illo futurus." 
 
 8 Cf. iv. 27.
 
 JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA 157 
 
 book also, the whole is declared to be always perfect. 1 For 
 Erigena no less than for Proclus, the M*"^ coexists with the 
 7T/>6o5os and the eirto-rpo^i} (though Erigena does not know 
 these particular terms). And the analogy of visible things is 
 not consistently carried through. For we have no knowledge 
 of any actual cycle that closes with a final rest of the visible 
 agents. As Bruno said after the lonians, the end of one pro- 
 cess is the beginning of another. Thus, if the analogy of the 
 parts were applicable to the whole, a repeated rhythm would 
 be demanded, not a single world-process. But the real ground 
 of the theory is a dogma. Erigena is seeking for confirmations, 
 and not simply "following the argument." We can guess 
 what his system might have been earlier or later ; but, as it is, 
 he accepts a datum not purely philosophical, and not scientific 
 even as science was understood. 
 
 The true tendency of his speculation may be seen in what 
 he brings forward to illustrate recurrence in the " intelligible " 
 order that is the object of the " liberal arts." The divisions 
 of Dialectic, he points out, start from ov<ria and are brought 
 back to it through the same stages. Arithmetic begins with 
 the monad and resolves all numbers again into this. 
 Geometry proceeds similarly in relation to the point ; Music in 
 relation to the single note ; Astronomy in relation to the in- 
 divisible unit by which it measures spaces of time. In 
 Grammar and Rhetoric, the remaining two of the seven liberal 
 disciplines, he goes on to say, examples have not been sought ; 
 because, on the one side, they are attached to Dialectic as 
 subordinate members ; and because, on the other side, they 
 do not treat of the nature of things, but rather of human rules 
 of custom, or of special causes and persons. Not that they 
 entirely want principles of their own : for Grammar may be 
 said to begin and end with the letter, Rhetoric with the 
 "hypothesis," or determined question which is beyond con- 
 troversy for the disputants. 2 
 
 In all this, clearly, there is no reference to an order in 
 time. And the same is true of what follows concerning human 
 nature. This, says Erigena, 8 through all its corruption has in 
 no wise lost the integrity of its essence, by which it is in union 
 
 1 v - 35 954 C : " Aliud est enim considerare singulas universitatis partes x 
 aliud totum. Hinc conficitur, ut, quod in parte contrarium esse putatur, 
 in toto non solum nou conlrarium, verum etiam pulchritudinis augmentun\ 
 reperitur." 
 
 2 v. 4. 3 v. 6.
 
 i 5 8 JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA 
 
 with God ; nor can it lose it. His view here closely resembles 
 that of Plotinus regarding the " pure soul," which remains 
 exempt from all sin and suffering, while the " composite 
 nature," produced by the association of soul and body, pays 
 the penalty of what has been done amiss. Our nature, 
 Erigena says in the same spirit, has not been lost or changed, 
 but discoloured with the deformity of vices. 1 From this " fall," 
 however, it is to return by stages. 
 
 Without attempting wholly to extricate the philosophy from 
 the mythology, we may proceed to the development of the 
 theory as it stands. 
 
 The essence of sensible things will remain perpetually; 
 because it was made in the divine wisdom beyond all times 
 and places and all mutability ; but what is generated at times 
 and places will perish, after an interval determined by the 
 Maker of all. To this end of preservation in their " reasons " 
 from which they set out not in their circumstances of place 
 and time all men aspire, and it cannot be supposed that they 
 will rest till they have attained it. The whole of human 
 nature will be finally liberated from death and misery, though 
 it will not be equally blessed in all. 2 
 
 The stages of reversion are five : ( i ) When the body is 
 resolved into the four elements from which it was composed, 
 and the soul thus liberated ; (2} When each receives back his 
 own body at the resurrection ; (3) When the body shall be 
 changed into spirit; (4) When the spirit, or more expressly, 
 the whole nature of man, shall return into its primordial 
 causes, which are ever and immutably in God ; (5) When 
 nature itself with its causes shall be moved (i.e., transformed 
 into God, as air illuminated is transformed into light. 8 
 
 This transformation of man and of all things into God does 
 not mean that their finite substance is to perish, but that they 
 are to be carried over by degrees into a fuller existence. 4 The 
 
 1 v. 6, 873 A. 
 
 3 v. 3, 868 B: "Hoc autem dicimus, non quod natura in omnibus 
 requaliter futura sit !>eata, sed quod in omnibus morte et miseria futura sit 
 libera. Esse enim et vivere et aeternaliter esse commune erit omnibus et 
 l>onis et malis ; bene autem et beate esse solis actione et scientia perfectis 
 proprium et speciale erit." 
 
 3 v. 8. 
 
 4 v. 8, 876 B : "Quomodo enim potest perire, quod in melius probatur 
 redire? Mutatio itaque humanae naturae in Deum non substantiae in- 
 teritus aestimanda est, sed in pristinum statum, quem praevaricando per- 
 diderat, mirabilis atque ineffabilis reversio."
 
 JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA 159 
 
 end is not a confusion of substances, but a union in which 
 each retains its identity. 1 Examples of such union without 
 confusion are found in the different individuals of a species, 
 the species of a genus, the genera of the same essence (o<Vfa) t 
 the numbers implicit in the monad, the lines implicit in the 
 point. 3 It is illustrated in simultaneous vision of the same 
 object by many persons ; there being no confusion of the 
 perceptions, though all refer to one thing. 8 So also different 
 musical sounds do not lose their particular qualities when com- 
 bined in a single harmony. And if, as has been said, the 
 qualities of visible things are in reality incorporeal, and terrene 
 bodies are formed by a heaping up of these incorporeal 
 qualities, what difficulty is there in the final resolution and 
 return of all that has been thus put together into the incor- 
 poreal, which is the real ? 4 
 
 The pupil here raises the question, whether all things do 
 not, throughout the processes of generation and corruption, 
 remain permanently in their causes ; the going forth to the 
 procreation of visible things, and the return, being only an 
 affair of places and times and accidents. Is not substance 
 always in reality free from these, as finally it will become free 
 from their appearance ? Yes, answers the master. All that 
 begins in time by generation must have an end ; but this does 
 not affect the incorporeal and intelligible grounds of corporeal 
 and sensible things. 5 
 
 The extension of bodies will perish ; and so also will time, 
 with motion, of which it is the measure. Before and after the 
 world, there is neither place, in this sense, nor time, but only 
 eternity. Place understood as mental definition, on the other 
 hand, is not among the things that perish. 6 Although, when 
 the world has returned to its source, places and times no 
 
 1 v. 8, 879 A : "Non enim vera ratio sinit, superiora inferioribus vel 
 contineri, vel attrahi, vel consumi. Inferiora vero superioribus naiuraliter 
 attrahuntur, et absorbenlur, non ut non sint, sed ut in eisplus salventur, et 
 subsistant, et unum sint." Cf. 880 A: " Natural um igitur manebit pro- 
 prietas, et earum erit unitas, nee proprietas auferet naturarum adunationem, 
 nee adunatio naturarum proprietatem." 
 
 3 v. 10. 
 
 V. 12. 
 
 v. 13. 
 
 5 v. 14. 
 v. 18.
 
 160 JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA 
 
 longer exist, there remain the " simple and unmixed reasons 
 of places and times." l 
 
 What is dwelt on in the end is the preservation rather than 
 the absorption of differences. 2 The " effects " namely, visible 
 things are to perish only by returning to their causes, and 
 not by becoming simply non-existent. 3 The " annihilation " 
 of local and temporal forms, which are mere appearance, 
 means the restoration of the things manifested under them 
 to their true reality. In their causes and reasons, "all 
 animals must be said to be more animals than in the corporeal 
 and sensible effects themselves. For where they subsist, there 
 they are truly animals. Similarly it is to be understood 
 regarding all sensible things, whether celestial or terrene. 
 Since the things that are varied in places and times and fall 
 under the bodily senses, are all of them not to be under- 
 stood as the substantial and truly existing things themselves, 
 but as certain transitory images and echoes of these." l This 
 is illustrated by the transmutation of the passions into the 
 virtues of the soul, and their preservation at this higher stage. 
 Why then, Erigena asks, may not irrationality itself be 
 transmuted (in the reunion of the whole) into the height of 
 rationality? 5 
 
 He thence goes on to deny the perpetuity of evil as an 
 object of punishment. At the consummation of things, all 
 evil, whether 'in the human race or in the demons, will be 
 
 1 v. 23, 906 AB : " Mundus quippe peribit, nullaque ipsius pars 
 remanebit : ac per hoc neque totum. Transibit enim in suas causas, ex 
 quibus processit, in quibus neque loca stint, neque tempora, sed locorum 
 temporumque simplices sinceraeque rationes, in quibus omnia unum sunt 
 neque ullis accidentibus discernuntur. Omnia enim simplicia, omni com- 
 positione substantiarum accidentiumque oarentia, et ut sic dicam, unitas 
 simplex, et multiplex adunatio omnium creaturarum in suis rationibus et 
 causis, ipsarum autem causarum et rationum in Verbo Dei unigenito, in 
 quo et facta sunt et subsistunt omnia." 
 
 2 v. 21. "Plane perspicio," the disciple comments, " non aliud esse 
 mundo perire, quam in causas suas redire, et in melius mutari." 
 
 8 v. 25, 913 B : " per inhumanationem Filii Dei omnis creatura in caelo 
 et in terra salva facta est. Omnem vero creaturam dico corpus, et vitalem 
 motum, et sensum, et super haec rationem et intellectum." 
 
 4 v. 25, 913-14- 
 
 6 v. 25, 916 BC : "Si ergo passiones, quas rationabilis natura ex 
 irrationabili in seipsam deduxerat, in naturales animae possunt mutari 
 virtutes, cur incredibile sit, ipsam irrationabilitatem in altitudinem 
 rationabilitatis transmutari ? "
 
 JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA 161 
 
 abolished. The heterodoxy of this, the Catholic editor 
 remarks, scarcely needs pointing out. * Erigena, while trying, as 
 in the De Praedestinatione, to educe it from Augustine's 
 borrowed doctrine that evil is no true being, but a negation of 
 being, appeals more especially to " the blessed Origen," 2 
 whose treatise T<T>' "APX^" he cites at considerable length. 3 
 Not the substance, but only the hostile will, of the enemies of 
 the good, whether men or demons, is to be destroyed. The 
 evil of punishment, fixed and retained for ever at the end of 
 the whole process, the teacher argues, would mar the perfection 
 of the "last things." The conception of hell itself, so long 
 and so far as it continues to exist, he spiritualises by treating 
 it as not a place, but the vain remorse of an evil conscience, 
 or the state of the bad will deprived of the means of doing 
 evil. 4 
 
 This interpretation the pupil accepts; but he raises the 
 difficulty, in what subject is the punishment. If all 
 " substance," as created by God, is impassible and incor- 
 ruptible, it cannot be this that is punished : neither can the 
 punishment be that of a mere "accident," without subject. 
 A third position, it is shown, remains ; namely, that " vice, 
 which is not, is punished, yet in something which is, and is 
 impassible, since it is not permitted to suffer pains. " 8 The 
 impassible subject of the pains imposed on its accidents, 
 Erigena speaks of as " humanity " ; thus again suggesting the 
 peculiar form of Realism held afterwards by Arabian 
 philosophers. This general and all-inclusive human nature he 
 compares to the solar light, uncontaminated by contact with 
 impurities ; 6 and to the element of air, vitalising all breathing 
 things, and in its own substance unaffected by mixture with 
 gross exhalations from the lower world. 7 
 
 If we were to take certain passages by themselves, it might 
 be thought that everlasting punishment in some form was 
 maintained. The ambiguity comes from the necessity of 
 
 1 " Ea, quae Joannes Scotus jam de abolitione mali deque poenis ac 
 suppliciis impiorum, sive hominum, sive demonum, cet. disputat, veritati 
 catholicae omnino repugnare, vix est, quod moneamus." (p. 918, note a.) 
 
 2 v. 27, 922 C. 3 v. 27, 929-30. 4 v. 29. 
 
 s v. 30, 940 D. Cf. 31, 943 C: " Ipsa siquidem natura, sicut libera 
 est, penitusque absoluta ab omni peccato, ita universaliter libera et 
 absoluta est ab omni poena peccati." 
 
 v. 31, 942 D. 7 v. 31, 947-8.
 
 1 62 JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA 
 
 using the consecrated theological language. Erigena, I take 
 it, meant his explanation of what "the letter" calls eternal 
 torments to refer only to what goes on while the world is in 
 process. The ultimate cessation of hell is plainly implied. l 
 Those who hold the common opinions, he describes as 
 " transfusing the gifts of nature and of grace into the cruelty 
 of vengeance." 2 What is spoken of as divine infliction of 
 penalties is a kind of " spiritual medicine " to bring back the 
 creature, weary of mutable things, to the immutable forms of 
 true reality. 8 And, he adds, repeating the doctrine already 
 set forth, the perverse movements of the will, which are 
 punished, are neither from God nor from created nature, but 
 are " incausal " : when they are sought out by themselves, 
 nothing is found in them but privation and defect of the 
 lawful and natural will. 4 
 
 As there is no separate place of punishment, so there is no 
 separate place of reward. The imagination of paradise as a 
 circumscribed portion of a " new heaven and new earth " seems 
 to Erigena so gross that on meeting with it in " books of the 
 holy Fathers " he is stupefied. Those " most spiritual men," 
 he thinks, can only have thus expressed themselves for the 
 edification of such as are "given up to terrene and carnal 
 thoughts and nourished on the rudiments of simple faith." 5 
 Then he restates his own view that time and local situation 
 are to cease entirely when the universe and all individual 
 things return into their " reasons." In the final reversion of all 
 things to their source, not even an " ethereal " body will be 
 left, but the body itself will pass into spirit in its sense of 
 intellect. 6 While this return is definitely educed from the 
 "ecclesiastical doctrine" and from Scripture, 7 it is not 
 identified with the Day of Judgment ; which is treated in a 
 
 ly - 35 953 B: " Non enim conveniret immortalis Creatoris bonitati, 
 imaginem sui aeterna morte detineri." 
 
 2 v. 37, 985 A. y. 35, 959 B. 
 
 4 Cf. v. 35, 960 A: "Ac per hoc verissime de divina praedicatur 
 justitia, quod in nulla creatura, quam fecit, puniri permittit, quod fecit ; 
 punit autem quod non fecit." 
 
 5 v. 37, 986 C. 
 
 6 v - 37 1 987 B. The Greek Fathers maintain " non mutationem corporis 
 terreni in caeleste corpus, sed omnino transitum in ipsum purum spiritum, 
 non in ilium, qui aether, sed in ilium, qui intellectus vocitatur." 
 
 7 Cf. v. 19.
 
 JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA 163 
 
 rationalising manner as meaning essentially, not a catastrophic 
 appearance of the Lord in the clouds, but the result of its 
 mortal life for each individual soul. 1 
 
 Though all souls are to return to God, not all are to be 
 " deified." Deification is a gift not of nature but of grace. 
 As is said in dependence on Dionysius the Areopagite : " It 
 is common to all the things that have been made, to return, as 
 by a kind of perishing, into their causes, which subsist in God ; 
 it is the property of the intellectual and rational substance to 
 be made one with God by virtue of contemplation, and to be 
 made God through grace." 2 The gift of deification is reserved 
 for some men and some angels. 8 This is indicated by the 
 parable of the wise and the foolish virgins. The foolish 
 represent that portion of mankind which desires only natural 
 goods : by the wise are signified they whose thoughts are 
 directed to the higher perfection to be attained through grace. 4 
 It is not in the least denied that natural goods are goods. 5 
 Accordingly, those that seek them are in the end to be 
 restored to paradise in the general sense, that is, to the 
 natural integrity of human nature ; though only those that aim 
 higher are, in the more special sense, to " eat of the tree of 
 life," or to be deified with the saints. 6 To any who may think 
 this difference in the distribution of gifts inequitable, Erigena 
 replies that a universe without variety and degrees would have 
 no beauty. There are distinctions among the orders of angels ; 
 and, if man had not fallen, there would no less have been 
 various orders of men. 
 
 Thus election and damnation are finally turned into the 
 harmonious mixture of " aristocratic " and " democratic " justice 
 in the universe. How little such a development was capable 
 of overcoming the forms of the creed, the history of the later 
 Middle Ages sufficiently proves. And of course the Gospel 
 
 ! v. 38,9978. 2 v. 21, 8980. 
 
 *v. 23, 904 AB. Cf. 907 A: "ipsam deificationem, quae soils 
 purgatissimis intellectibus donabitur." 
 
 4 v. 38,1014 BC. 
 
 5 Cf. v. 36, 936 AB. From the necessity of "phantasy" for knowledge, 
 it is argued that this, like everything that springs from natural causes, is a 
 good. "Disc. Phantasia igitur aliquod bonum est, quoniam naturalium - 
 rerum imaginatio est. MAG. Illud negare non possum : omne siquidem, 
 quod ex naturalibus causis oritur, bonum esse non denegatur." 
 
 8 v. 38, 1015 AB.
 
 1 64 JOHN SCOTUS ERIGENA 
 
 itself suggests no such softened interpretation of the "Gehenna" 
 and " outer darkness " of the Parables. The Eastern despot 
 or slaveholder, with his " tormentors " always at hand, could 
 not be turned into the ideal ruler of the philosophic " City of 
 Zeus," which Erigena would fain have restored. His own 
 hope, as we may infer from the last sentence of the brief 
 recapitulation that follows only too many pages of the custom- 
 ary allegorising, was in the perhaps remote future. 
 " Unusquisque in suo sensu abundet, donee veniat ilia lux, 
 quae de luce falso philosophantium facit tenebras, et tenebras 
 recte cognoscentium convertit in lucem." What he might not 
 have understood is that liberation of the light he had already 
 attained could only come through dissolution of the whole 
 structure and system within which it had been his destiny to 
 work.
 
 ANIMISM, RELIGION AND 
 PHILOSOPHY 
 
 FOR a growing science like anthropology, there appears to be 
 some advantage in attempting from time to time a kind of 
 philosophical schematism. Such attempts may suggest points 
 for research ; and, as they are not likely to be taken for more 
 than they are worth, they can in any case do no harm. The 
 present attempt, of course, starts from previous discussions ; but, 
 to avoid complication, I shall try to state the positions in such 
 a way that they may be understood by themselves. 
 
 The most general thesis is this : that the thoughts of man- 
 kind about the causes behind or immanent in the visible order 
 of things go through three stages ; which may be characterised 
 distinctively as the animistic, the religious, and the 
 philosophical. When man, from a group of social animals, 
 not yet thinking or speaking, became truly man through 
 the evolution of speech and thought, there arose 
 many speculations. A fundamental one was that which 
 is known as the "ghost-theory." The problem presented 
 itself: how to explain the alternations of consciousness and 
 unconsciousness, waking and sleeping, life and death. The 
 primeval solution was to suppose a more or less permanent 
 entity, capable of going away to other places and again 
 returning ; the presence of which was the cause of the 
 manifestations summed up as " life." This entity was figured, 
 according to analogies suggested by reflexions, shadows, dreams 
 and so forth, as a second " self," in appearance like a material 
 organism, but thinner of substance. The self, more or less 
 permanent though not necessarily immortal, having thus 
 assumed a figured and as it were objective form, could be used 
 as a general idea to interpret not only human and animal life
 
 1 66 ANIMISM, RELIGION, PHILOSOPHY 
 
 but the changes in inorganic things. Independently of this 
 "ghost-theory," life may already have been attributed to 
 moving objects ; but not before the ghost-theory was evolved 
 could the general mode of explanation known as " animism " 
 shape itself out. Some kind of figured image was a necessary 
 adjunct to early thinking about causes. Hence the importance 
 of the ghost-soul as distinguished from the vague notion of a 
 force that was also life. To anything that, in the process of 
 abstracting from the whole mass of phenomena, came to be 
 looked upon for any reason of interest or convenience or 
 curiosity, as a separate " object," a ghost-soul of its own could 
 be ascribed. This was regarded at once as the bond that 
 gave it permanence and as the source of action and change. 
 An ascending process of " integration " accompanied the 
 gradual discrimination or " differentiation " of phenomena ; so 
 that vague or more definite cosmic powers came to be 
 conceived as permanent existences with ghost-souls of their 
 own. These, being thought of on the analogy of the self, 
 might be figured as becoming separately visible in human 
 shape. Or, as a deviation from the type of the " magnified and 
 non-natural man," they might be imagined as presenting them- 
 selves either in the forms of particular kinds of animals or in 
 compounded and monstrous forms. Meanwhile human life 
 went on complicating itself. Classes were distinguished, and 
 societies came to consist of rulers and ruled. Customary law 
 and morals grew up. All this structure was transferred by 
 analogy to the ghostly or " spiritual " world. A " supernatural " 
 hierarchy was conceived, which comprised at once human souls 
 separated by death from their bodies, and the lesser and 
 greater invisible powers in or behind nature. These last are 
 the " gods " and " demons," with whom the souls of individual 
 men are associated, usually at an inferior level. Since man 
 feels his dependence on the external order of things in which 
 he is involved, he tends to put all that concerns him under the 
 protection of the beings he conceives as ruling it. He begins 
 to fear or love them because he regards them as personal wills 
 that can be affected by the things he does or leaves undone. 
 Thus arise " cults," consisting of prayer, sacrifice and 
 sacrament. Prayer, anthropologically defined, is entreaty to 
 a quasi-human being ; sacrifice is primarily a gift ; sacrament 
 is participation in a banquet. Ghosts of ancestors, with 
 demons and gods, may have part in the devotion addressed to 
 the invisible powers; but this devotion becomes most dis-
 
 ANIMISM, RELIGION, PHILOSOPHY 167 
 
 tinctively entitled to the name of "religion" when it is 
 systematised in relation to certain great gods. The special 
 class of the " priesthood," scarcely needed when animism is in 
 its first anarchic phase, assumes importance as the invisible 
 hierarchy is specialised and brought under the government of 
 a single head. This class tends to claim more and more 
 of human life for the powers it represents. Aided by the 
 conscious weakness and ignorance of the many, it may succeed, 
 by assuming knowledge of the unknown, in establishing its 
 supremacy on earth. The normal result of this is an 
 elaborate and at last petrified system of sacred rites, carrying 
 with it a fixed order of all that began as spontaneous 
 expression of human needs and aspirations. If, however, the 
 movement does not go too far ; if " religion " grows sufficiently 
 to substitute a kind of cosmic or centralised or generalised 
 outlook for mere individualist " animism," but does not gain 
 full control ; then there appears a third stage. Thinkers arise 
 who question the customary views embodied in the social and 
 spiritual tradition. Thus the " philosophic " stage is reached. 
 In common with religion, philosophy aspires to unity ; but it 
 tends to dissolve the unity based on old custom. " Free 
 thought," in a smaller or larger class, is the condition of its 
 existence. When it becomes practical, it aims in its own way 
 at the direction of human life. Sometimes it has been 
 tempted to take short cuts, and to elaborate schemes of 
 philosophic oligarchy. Normally, however, it perceives in the 
 long run that the direction must come, not from the attainment 
 of power by the representatives of a particular doctrine, but 
 through a consensus arrived at by widening the atmosphere of 
 discussion to which the life of the philosopher owes its birth. 
 
 What is called " magic " seems to be best defined as the 
 practical instrument oi the animistic conception of things. 
 The " medicine-man," or early professional wonder-worker, in 
 accordance with the theory of the time, supposes things to be 
 capable of sympathetically affecting one another through their 
 immanent souls. His distinction from other men consists in 
 his ability, partly natural and partly acquired, to devise 
 particular ways and means of influence. Side by side with 
 magic, there grows up what comes to be known later as positive 
 "science." For certain groups of phenomena, an order of a 
 more impersonal kind impresses itself on observers. One 
 generalisation is added to another; and, as some of these 
 generalisations turn out useful in practice, the search for them
 
 1 68 ANIMISM, RELIGION, PHILOSOPHY 
 
 becomes systematised. Both magic and the rudiments of 
 science run on through the distinctively religious stage. Either 
 or both, as in ancient Egypt and Chaldaea, may be specially 
 cultivated by the priestly class. Where a strong hierarchy 
 exists, cultivation of science, or the knowledge of impersonal 
 " laws of nature," in subordination to utility, has little tendency 
 to bring on a new phase of thought. Its accumulation, 
 however, as soon as the results are viewed by minds that have 
 arrived at reflection within a less fixed social structure, con- 
 tributes powerfully to aid the rise of philosophy, or disinterested 
 and individual speculation on the causes and principles of 
 things as parts of the whole. In the end, and in an ideal order, 
 the proper place of science would seem to be an instrumental 
 one in relation to philosophy, similar to that which is filled by 
 magic in relation to primeval animism. In periods when men 
 lose the sense of unity, it temporarily falls into subserviency to 
 the commonest material ends blindly pursued by the greatest 
 mass or by the most powerful anarchs. 
 
 A form assumed by religion either in rivalry with philosophy 
 or a little before philosophy appears, is that of " divine revela- 
 tion." Teachers known as " prophets " arise, who proclaim 
 a reform of the existing priestly religion in the name of a 
 communication to them from the gods. Sometimes the great 
 god of the tribe or race is declared to be the revealer. Some- 
 times a deity who has passed or is passing into obscurity is 
 announced as a new or hitherto unknown god. The prophet 
 may be a real person who spoke or wrote ; or he may be an 
 ideal figure, in whose name teachings are put forth by a group. 
 Revealed religion belongs to a stage of some ethical reflective- 
 ness ; but of less reflectiveness, and, more especially, of less 
 disinterested questioning, than philosophy ; which appeals not 
 to the commands of a god, but to the rational insight of hearers. 
 In its actual development, revelation can become as hierarchical 
 as the older priestly religions which have already systematised 
 the popular cults and the mythical fancies arising out of them. 
 In its most characteristic form, it transcends the bounds of 
 nationality, becomes aggressively intolerant of other religions, 
 and appeals to "faith" against the presumptuous doubts of 
 " the world." Coming, as it does, when the spontaneous 
 formation of cults and myths is already on the wane, it is apt 
 to find philosophy crossing its path. And, even apart from 
 this, it finds a latent scepticism tending to invalidate its claims. 
 Thus even a period so generally credulous and so dominated
 
 ANIMISM, RELIGION, PHILOSOPHY 169 
 
 by a systematised form of revealed religion as the European 
 Middle Age, expressed what was the secret thought of many in 
 the legend of the " Three Impostors." An impious book, it 
 was said, had been written, in which this title was applied to 
 the founders of the three great religions which, in Europe and 
 Western Asia, claimed supreme authority over a peculiar race 
 or over all mankind. 
 
 Revealed religion, confronted by philosophy, shapes out the 
 intellectual system known among Jews, Christians and 
 Mohammedans as " theology." This is a doctrine taught as 
 authoritative by the hierarchy, and constructed by the 
 scientific elaboration of myths and legends accepted as data 
 not to be questioned. The typical expression of the system 
 is the mediaeval conception of philosophy as the "ancilla 
 theologiae." 
 
 Even when philosophy has separated itself from the 
 mythologies that accompany or grow out of religious cults, it 
 continues to have points of reference to the phases that pre- 
 ceded it. Accordingly, philosophers have been warned by 
 anthropologists that they must carefully test their instruments 
 of thought. Not only " animism," but language and arithmetic 
 are products of savage or barbaric intelligence, and were not 
 framed for the speculative purposes to which they are afterwards 
 put. How does this affect the validity of philosophy itself? 
 Are the systems of individual thinkers likely to show nearer 
 approaches to truth than modes of thought which have 
 pervaded whole societies, and from which no one born into 
 those societies can escape if he would ? 
 
 Let us test what are still the rival types of philosophy first 
 in relation to animism. 
 
 It may be maintained that when mythological explanations 
 from gods having the character of ghosts are once transcended, 
 two types of independent philosophy arise in succession by a 
 purely speculative process. In its first disinterested effort, 
 human thought fixes on some objective ground of things, and 
 tries to explain all else, including itself, from this. Thus 
 arises the phase of " naturalism." Then, stirred up to further 
 reflection by the unsolved problems left, thought turns back 
 upon itself and finds that it has within a ground of reality 
 at least co-ordinate with that which is without. Later, some 
 thinkers go on to argue that the apparent objective ground is 
 a derivative of a principle like that which the mind discovers 
 in itself. Yet, though this process seems purely speculative,
 
 170 ANIMISM, RELIGION, PHILOSOPHY 
 
 the question may be raised whether in either phase real 
 independence has been gained. Dr. Tylor, in Primitive 
 Culture, has drawn attention to the resemblance between the 
 theories on the origin of mental images put forward by some 
 of the " naturalistic " thinkers, and the early animistic fancies 
 about ghostly but still material semblances thrown off by ob- 
 jects. And something apparently like the Platonic " ideas," 
 from which in Europe the other group of philosophies has been 
 developed, is also to be found among barbaric tribes. Indeed, 
 in the notion of archetypal animals, from which the individual 
 members of the species are copied, some primeval tribes might 
 seem to have anticipated theories worked out by modern com- 
 parative anatomists of "idealistic" lineage. Further, the 
 whole doctrine of the idealists in general may seem open to 
 the charge that its point of origin is merely the " ghost," to 
 which it returns by reaction from the naturalistic theories, 
 whether mechanical or "hylozoist." Hylozoism, again, has 
 its point of origin in the primitive fancy that there is a kind of 
 " life " in moving things. 
 
 There is no need to say much on the criticism of naturalism 
 from this point of view. It will be readily admitted that later 
 doctrines of a naturalistic kind have provided themselves or 
 have been provided with a verifiable experimental basis in 
 physics and physiology which puts them out of reach of attack 
 on the ground of their anthropological origins. If they are to 
 be attacked on the ground of origin at all, criticism must start 
 from an investigation of processes of perception which existed 
 before man became man. The origin of the idea of material 
 substance having been psychologically traced, any one who 
 wishes to use it as an ultimate basis may reasonably be asked 
 to give grounds for holding that, while the idea has come to 
 exist through a mental process not by itself guaranteeing reality, 
 it is still intellectually trustworthy. The answer would only be 
 furnished by a philosophical system that had some rational 
 account to give of mind also. In the meantime, the bare fact 
 that primitive men persisted in what was no doubt the naive 
 animal belief that there is something of the nature of " material 
 substance" outside, does not tell against ancient or modern 
 physical ontologies, whether these work with continuous and 
 transformable elements, or with atoms and void, or with atoms 
 and ether. 
 
 Is the idealist in worse case ? Is his system, from the 
 anthropological point of view, reactionary ? On the whole, it
 
 ANIMISM, RELIGION, PHILOSOPHY 171 
 
 does not seem so. The resemblances to primitive fancies are 
 not greater, and the points of contact are not more important, 
 than those that can be shown for naturalism. Plato's realised 
 "ideas," as principles of explanation, have a purely philoso- 
 phical pedigree. Historically they are traceable to the pro- 
 foundly scientific investigation of Socrates into concepts or 
 general notions. General definitions of terms being fixed, while 
 the particulars brought under them vary, it seemed to Plato 
 that real forms, somehow of mental nature, corresponding to 
 that which is general in language, might constitute a permanent 
 system which was the reality behind the flux of the visible 
 world. And this problem of mediation between flux and 
 permanence was determined for him by the fully articulate 
 "naturalistic" philosophies (as they are now considered) of 
 Heraclitus and Parmenides. If, in speaking of the soul, his 
 language and thought are to some extent coloured by the 
 " ghost-theory," his successors were able to free themselves as 
 completely from this as the modern successors of Democritus 
 and Epicurus have freed themselves from the theory that mental 
 images are thin films of existing or no longer existing persons 
 or things. It may be said equally of Plotinus and of Berkeley, 
 that if they had not adopted the word " soul " or " spirit," they 
 would have been obliged to invent a term or terms to indicate 
 something undeniably having reality, and yet totally unex- 
 plained in the seeming accounts given of it by contemporary 
 " mechanical philosophers." Was not Plato's own reference to 
 a reality " beyond being " an attempt not yet quite successful 
 to express pure subjectivity in its opposition to "being" 
 viewed as objective ? The " ideas," though he regarded them 
 as mental, he had not been able to clear of a kind of objective 
 character involving their separability from all actual minds. 
 
 Thus the rival philosophies are left to arguments from science 
 and reason. They cannot invalidate one another on grounds 
 of history or " pre-history." Substantially, the origins both of 
 naturalism and of idealism are rational. 
 
 What then is their relation to the historical religions ? Or 
 is there some difference in this respect between the two types ? 
 
 The general answer is that naturalistic philosophy had put 
 forth its declaration of independence by the end of the sixth 
 century B.C. ; and that, with some modifications, the same 
 attitude was continued by idealism. For all popular gods are 
 " personal." That is to say, they are conceived as individual 
 wills capable of relation to other individual wills. They can
 
 172 ANIMISM, RELIGION, PHILOSOPHY 
 
 enter into communion with their worshippers; can contract 
 with them or share a banquet ; and can have their purposes 
 changed by means of which the typical modes are prayer and 
 sacrifice. Now above al) these lords of the world, if not 
 actually as excluding them, the Ionian and Eleatic philosophies 
 placed the universe or its essence. That essence may be 
 defined as rational law or as pure being. Equally, it is inacces- 
 sible to the means of approach used in the popular cults. God, 
 said Xenophanes, is neither in body nor in thought like mortal 
 man. And even tried by a human standard, the deeds com- 
 monly attributed to the gods are most shameful. To offer blood- 
 sacrifice in expiation of guilt, said Heraclitus, is as if one were 
 to wash out mud with mud. If the gods are perfectly wise 
 and benevolent, said Socrates, is it not better for ignorant beings 
 who do not know their own good, to ask only for good things 
 in general, and not to make particular requests to the gods ? 
 And by Plato the modes of feeling characteristic of the " natural 
 religion " of all mankind were regarded as the most impious of 
 all. To treat the gods as accessible to prayers and gifts is to 
 hold that they can be bribed. Gods of whom things are 
 related that do not conform to the " idea of the good " can have 
 no place in a city ruled by philosophers. Later, perhaps the 
 most primitive of distinctively religious ideas, that of sacrament, 
 is treated in a dialogue of Cicero as if it had long since been 
 denuded of all its meaning. No one can be so foolish as to 
 believe that what he is eating or drinking is a god. 
 
 This is one side of the case. On the other side, it must be 
 allowed that often philosophers have tried to enter into alliance 
 with religion, and have accused their philosophic antagonists 
 of being irreligious. These again have sometimes retorted by 
 accusing the " religious " philosophers of forming reactionary 
 alliances. And all schools alike have been at times eager to 
 show that, when everything else is gone, philosophy itself is a 
 religion. 
 
 Shall we agree with this contention ? If philosophy, in both 
 its phases, has reached, as it undoubtedly has for some thinkers, 
 a position not only beyond mere animism but beyond the 
 historical religions, are we to say that it is still a kind of 
 " religion ? " And can any one school, if it chooses, make this 
 very general claim on better grounds than its rivals ? 
 
 On behalf of idealism, it might be urged that, since its 
 ultimately real world corresponds with that to which primitive 
 men assigned their ghosts and gods, this is the permanently
 
 ANIMISM, RELIGION, PHILOSOPHY 173 
 
 religious view ; that animism, religion, and idealistic philosophy 
 or " spiritualism," are successive resultants of the same impulse 
 in conflict with a more or less developed materialism. On the 
 other hand, the term religion seems to convey especially the 
 notion of a stringent coercive power. Whether the tie is 
 primarily conceived to bind (religare) the worshipper or the 
 god, does not affect the general argument. The important 
 thing is, that there is system and necessity. Now the feeling 
 of this binding unity, on the intellectual side, has been most 
 strongly impressed by the objective order of nature , whereas 
 the centre of interest to the animist or spiritualist is a self or 
 selves. And the many selves could scarcely have become 
 aware that they were in a system at all unless they had inferred 
 in one another resembling ideas which they took to be derived 
 from a single objective world common to them all. So far, 
 therefore, as idealism and naturalism are concerned, the claims 
 balance. 
 
 From other points of view, the idea of a bond, and the 
 feeling of dependence implied in religion, have been so used 
 as to connect it especially with the social order and with 
 ethics. Here is the source of the Positivist Religion of 
 Humanity, and of Matthew Arnold's definition of religion as 
 " morality touched with emotion." And these, whatever may 
 be said by the representatives of the historic religions, are not 
 simply individual fancies ; as may be shown. 
 
 The Positivist conception has the character of a genuine 
 deification. For religion, as actually existent, has not always, 
 in its intenser forms, directed itself to the whole or to its cause 
 or principle, but has often especially adored powers great 
 though not universal. " Ancestor-worship," indeed, seems to 
 be a portion of early not yet organised animism taken up 
 afterwards into systematised religion as a subordinate part. 
 The nations in whom it continues to predominate are not 
 regarded by us as distinctively religious in temperament. 
 And the individual human beings that are the objects of a cult 
 never seem to rise to a very high stage of deification. Yet 
 Man as well as Nature can contribute to the pantheon by a 
 generalising process. When among the powers worshipped 
 as great gods there are found ancestors of tribes or races, 
 these seem to be imaginary representatives of the whole 
 people, like " Hellen " or " Israel," not actual persons 
 even vaguely remembered. In their own way, they have the 
 generality and remoteness belonging to cosmic powers like the.
 
 i 7 4 ANIMISM, RELIGION, PHILOSOPHY 
 
 sky or the sun. Sometimes they become reduced to the 
 status of " eponymous ancestors " and nothing more : some- 
 times they retain a higher rank as permanent tribal gods. No 
 general rule can be laid down as to their origin and phases of 
 transformation. But, evidently, in view of these instances, 
 humanity can claim by analogy to be regarded as a "great 
 being " of divine order, though not as the God of the universe. 
 In the worship of Humanity there would be no reversion to 
 mere ancestor-worship. And in regarding any conceived 
 universal God as too high to be the object of a cult, the 
 Positivists, as they themselves also contend, do not represent 
 a deviation from normal religious instinct. If they desired 
 extraneous philosophical support, they might find it in the 
 " general human intellect " of the Averroists ; which was held 
 to be immortal in contrast with the fluctuating individualities 
 that are its temporary expression. 
 
 The view that religion is " morality touched with emotion " 
 can claim, if not such decided affinities with organised religions, 
 yet at any rate a long philosophic ancestry. Spinoza in the 
 Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, Pomponazzi and Bruno and 
 others during the period of the Renaissance, and before them 
 a whole series of mediaeval thinkers, nominally Christian or 
 Mohammedan as the case might be, were willing to regard 
 religion (or "theology," as they said) in this light. The 
 philosopher rose to intellectual contemplation or to mystic 
 absorption in the divine. His virtue was disinterested. For 
 the multitude, the moral virtues under the sanction of hopes 
 and fears were the highest attainable. The " religions " were 
 to be judged by their power of directing the emotions of men 
 in general to practical conduct. All were good provided they 
 did this ; if at the same time they did not assume an intolerant 
 attitude to knowledge, but respected the free thought of the 
 few. 
 
 Again, though not in the same way, Kant thought that 
 which is permanent in religion to be ethics in one aspect. 
 His conception agrees on the whole with that of the later 
 Stoics : and in Bruno, a thinker of very different temperament, 
 there are occasional suggestions of a similar view. For Kant 
 regarded religion, in this sense, not as an imperfect thing but 
 as the highest in man ; and Bruno, in theory, placed the Stoic 
 calm, at once ethical and religious, above the enthusiastic 
 effort towards contemplative vision and ecstasy. 
 
 There is moreover an affinity between the ordinary type of
 
 ANIMISM, RELIGION, PHILOSOPHY ITS 
 
 the " good man " and the " religious man." The moral virtues 
 have to be practised from custom and training before they can 
 be practised from insight ; and a favourable condition for the 
 observance of some of them is impressibility by all that is 
 received and believed in the surrounding society. Fear of all 
 deviations from the fixed order of a ritual is likely to be ac- 
 companied by awe of an established moral code in its social 
 character. Now the man who cherishes fear of the super- 
 natural sanction appealed to by his own community (the 
 e&re/Sijr), or who loves the familiar rites, or desires more 
 minutely specified ones (the ^tXofli/Tijs), is looked upon as 
 pre-eminently pious or religious. And it is usually expected 
 that such a man will, in consequence, be morally good from 
 the point of view of the social code. If he is not, it is thought 
 anomalous. 
 
 On the other hand, the " mystic " is often thought to be a 
 distinctively religious type. But the mystic is essentially one 
 who, though practising the moral virtues, has gone beyond 
 them and is seeking to relate himself to the unity in or above 
 the whole, and no longer to the humanised gods that deal in 
 rewards and punishments. From the position he has attained, 
 he rejects for himself all special rites, and even somewhat looks 
 down upon the practical virtues. It may often be said that he 
 is in effect escaping from what is historic in religion to philo- 
 sophy. And yet this philosophy itself, even when dissociated 
 from every positive cult, is often called " religious." In the 
 philosophy that springs out of science, an analogue of mystic- 
 ism is " cosmic emotion ; " and for this too a religious char- 
 acter has been claimed. 
 
 Thus the result of the examination is ambiguous. Philosophy- 
 has transcended the historic religions : and yet there are 
 assignable grounds why it may call itself "religious" if it 
 chooses. There would of course be extreme rashness in any 
 attempt to forecast the future of religion as the word has 
 hitherto been understood. Its most imposing and most 
 terrible manifestations appeared after war had been definitely 
 declared by the philosophers on its underlying ideas in the 
 name of the true and the just. Yet this must be insisted on : 
 that philosophy is no mere transition between one dominant 
 religion and another, but contains in itself the promise of a 
 higher and more permanent order than the august structures of 
 the historic faiths. We may speculate about possible " religions 
 of the future;" but in face of them as in face of the religions
 
 176 ANIMISM, RELIGION, PHILOSOPHY 
 
 of the past, it would be the right and duty of philosophy 
 to maintain its independence. For the ultimate end is not 
 the elaboration of a new ritual, conformable to new ideas, but 
 the prevalence of philosophy, which has no need of ritual, 
 as the guide of humanity. 
 
 If this conclusion seems too austere, we must recall to mind 
 that philosophy is not the whole of the culture which is 
 substituting itself for that of the historic religions. When the 
 whole is considered, it will be seen that there is gain and no 
 loss. Even philosophy by itself, compared with the 
 speculative element in religions, is more varied as well as 
 more disinterested. Contrast the narrowly practical, credulous 
 yet essentially incurious, minds of the Christian Fathers with 
 those of their philosophic contemporaries even when least 
 original. If we bring artistic culture into the account, the 
 case is still stronger. As traditional religion ceases to 
 dominate men's spirits, art, in all its forms, passes into a 
 higher phase. In spite of the opposition that is often sup- 
 posed to exist, it developes along with ethics ; though the two 
 developments may not often simultaneously reach their height 
 in the same society. For reflective ethics appears when the 
 efficacy of traditional rites is questioned ; when prophets 
 begin to set justice and mercy against sacrifice. So also the 
 stiff " hieratic " forms of typically religious art give way to 
 forms in which the aesthetic sense attains freedom of 
 expression. Really great art, even of a religious kind, 
 scarcely appears while the faith which it serves is yet unopposed 
 from without and unvexed by internal scepticism. An out- 
 burst of it seems usually to coincide with the incipient 
 decadence of belief. Thus the other expressions of human 
 activity, and not merely speculation, go on to a newer order 
 as the "close knots of religions" are undone. Or, if we like 
 to put it in Hegelian phrase, historic religion, with all that it has 
 tried to express, is " taken up " into the next period of man's 
 spiritual evolution ; and thus in the end nothing is lost. 
 
 The strength of the old structures must be admitted. For 
 preserving archaisms there is no power comparable to religion. 
 Under favouring conditions, there seems no limit to the 
 length of time a sacerdotal hierarchy, in alliance with political 
 absolutism, can last on in a petrified form. Yet, when the 
 conditions are unfavourable to survival, a possible life of 
 millennia may be reduced to an actual one of centuries. Why 
 did not the new Persian theocracy of the Sassanidae last as
 
 ANIMISM, RELIGION, PHILOSOPHY 177 
 
 long as the old institutions of Egypt or Babylon? Merely 
 because it could not escape early collision with the aggressive 
 fanaticism which sprang from the new and less complex creed 
 of Mohammed. A similar doom may be in store for the 
 Russian theocracy. For circumstances begin to be even more 
 hostile. On one side a foe has arisen with superior military 
 organisation. On the other side a subversive propaganda is 
 ever going on. And this starts, not (as in the case of the 
 Roman Empire confronted with Christianity) from the lower 
 civilisation of the East, absolutist and theocratic, but from 
 polities which, whether fully conscious of it or not, are the 
 heirs of the ancient republican state. 
 
 How long the transformation will take, there as elsewhere, 
 and whether there will again be great reversals, it is useless to 
 discuss. The whole matter has been summed up by 
 Giordano Bruno, in a passage of which the primary idea is 
 better known than the remarkable qualifications with which it 
 is stated. " We are older and have a longer age behind us 
 than our predecessors. But that some of those who came 
 later have been no wiser, and that in general the multitude of 
 those now living have no more wit, than the men of former 
 times, is because they have not lived with the years of others, 
 but are dead to others' experience as to their own. Moreover, 
 since there is perpetual vicissitude of opinions as of all else, 
 to have regard to philosophies simply as ancient, or again 
 as modern, is the same as trying to decide which came first, 
 day or night. The thing we ought to consider is, whether 
 our own thought or the thought of our adversaries is that 
 which puts a term to the night or to the day." ' 
 
 1 Cena delle Ceneri, Dialogo I. I have abbreviated the passage in 
 translation . 
 
 12
 
 A COMPENDIOUS CLASSIFICA- 
 TION OF THE SCIENCES 
 
 IT is generally allowed that in his Classification of the Science 8 
 Comte furnished a valuable clue to a systematic order in the 
 objective study of nature. Metaphysicians and psychologists 
 find his scheme at fault in its imperfect recognition of the 
 place of subjective studies. Still, it may be noted that he 
 himself, in his later speculations, did something to remedy 
 this defect. After Sociology, which he at first regarded as the 
 supreme science, he placed a Science of Morality. Further, 
 in his Synthese Subjective, he began to set forth a statement 
 of fundamental principles underlying all the positive sciences ; 
 and, beyond them all, a view of the cosmos as animated and 
 as related to ends. This indeed was put forward as poetry or 
 religion, and not as demonstrated truth ; but it is plainly an 
 approximation to a more " metaphysical " view than that which 
 he had hitherto taken. What I propose is to carry out this 
 completion systematically, with due recognition of the validity 
 of subjective principles which Comte himself would have 
 repudiated, but which, as is acknowledged equally by the 
 successors of Kant and of Mill, are indispensable for a full 
 account of knowledge. 
 
 In Comte's final scheme the positive sciences follow one 
 another in the order : Mathematics, Astronomy, Physics, 
 Chemistry, Biology, Sociology, Morality. This list itself, to 
 begin with, needs correction. Astronomy, as Mr. Spencer 
 has shown to the satisfaction even of some adherents of 
 Comte, does not properly belong to the series of fundamental 
 or abstract sciences as he conceived them. It is a concrete 
 science in the sense in which Geology is a concrete science.
 
 CLASSIFICATION OF THE SCIENCES 179 
 
 Under Biology, Comte himself made a special division for 
 Cerebral Physiology ; this being his equivalent for Psychology. 
 When Psychology is recognised by name, it is clearly entitled 
 to a separate place. Lastly, it may be observed that Comte's 
 Moral Science is not philosophical ethics, but is the science 
 of the individual human mind viewed as posterior to life in 
 society. Thus it is really a higher Psychology ; namely, that 
 of man as possessing the attributes which distinguish him 
 from brutes. 
 
 When from the correction of the list we proceed to its 
 completion, we find that before Mathematics must come Logic 
 (Formal and Material) viewed as a philosophical science. 
 
 After the higher branch of Psychology comes Metaphysics 
 (as Theory of Knowledge and as Ontology). We are now 
 presented with the result that, to figure the amended classi- 
 fication, Comte's linear series, provisionally conceived as in a 
 straight line, must be bent into a circle. For a series
 
 i8o CLASSIFICATION OF THE SCIENCES 
 
 beginning with Formal Logic and ending with Metaphysics is 
 subjective at both extremes. Moreover, in the speculative 
 though not in the didactic order, Metaphysics as Theory of 
 Knowledge precedes Logic. This is represented in the 
 accompanying diagram. The additional points there figured 
 will be explained in the sequel. 
 
 The problem now before us is to show how the determina- 
 tions of this series are consequent one on another. Beginning 
 with Formal Logic, we may simply posit, as first principles of 
 the science, the Laws of Thought, which, though disclosed by 
 metaphysical investigation, can be stated with perfect intelligi- 
 bility to those who have not gone through the dialectical pro- 
 cess that establishes them. For scientific purposes, it is 
 sufficient that they should be found to be applicable tests of 
 formally valid thought. Nor is the metaphysical problem 
 ever raised by their breaking down. It arises from the 
 theoretical need felt of completing the circle. The circle 
 becomes formally complete when the Theory of Knowledge 
 restores to us with confirmation the principles on which we 
 have hitherto implicitly or explicitly proceeded. Historically, 
 it may be noted, Aristotle arrived at the Laws of Contradiction 
 and of Excluded Middle in his Metaphysics. 
 
 These and the Law of Identity I hold to be laws of thought, 
 not of things. To take specially the Law of Contradiction, 
 which, according to Aristotle's exact way of putting it, asserts 
 that A cannot be not-A at the same time and in the same 
 relation. The law tells us that thought, if it would be formally 
 valid, must not contradict itself; but it does not enable us to 
 assert a single materially new proposition. Given a subjective 
 world of concepts, we can maintain order among them by this 
 and the other laws ; but we cannot make any assertion that is 
 not implied in what we have already said. Thus, unless we 
 have, beyond the laws of thought, some general proposition or 
 propositions about experience, we can have no science of 
 nature. The laws of thought by themselves do not allow us to 
 deny, a priori, that what objectively exists is a Heraclitean 
 flux without the reason which Heraclitus supposed to underlie 
 it, and without the equivalence of measure which he held to be 
 the rule of its transformations. Let us imagine ourselves 
 endowed with the laws of thought and presented with such a 
 flux. The Law of Contradiction is evidently of no avail if 
 nothing remains itself for more than a moment and if there is 
 no constant relation of it to anything else. It is true that we
 
 CLASSIFICATION OF THE SCIENCES 18: 
 
 are still obliged to treat the momentary existence of A as in- 
 consistent with its non-existence at that moment ; but, if that 
 is all, there can be no system of experiential knowledge. The 
 formal law does not entitle us to deny the complete absence of 
 perdurability or uniformity. Thus, on the one side, it is 
 valid for thought whatever our experience may be ; and, on the 
 other side, we cannot by means of it anticipate experience to 
 the smallest extent. For real availability, it is absolutely 
 dependent on there being an order of which by itself it con- 
 tains no assertion. 
 
 In passing from Formal to Material Logic, we come first to 
 the general principles of mathematical knowledge. Since 
 Kant's investigation of these, it is allowed that they are "syn- 
 thetic " and not merely " analytic." That is to say, there are 
 involved in mathematical demonstration propositions which 
 are neither an affair of hypothetical definition nor can be educed 
 from definitions by means of the formal laws of thought. 
 To take Kant's own examples. The geometrical axiom that 
 " two straight lines cannot enclose a space " is not a truth that 
 can be evolved by mere comparison of the concepts of the 
 straight line and of space. Similarly with an arithmetical pro- 
 position such as 7 + 5 = 12: no mere comparison of the con- 
 cepts of the separate numbers can give the resulting number. 
 In both cases, what is required is a construction in intuition 
 or in the corresponding imagination, a process of mental 
 drawing, or of numbering things or events in time. And the 
 peculiarity of mathematical principles is that, upon such con- 
 struction, recognition of the necessary truth of the proposition 
 is the outcome of a single act of comparison. Thus they are 
 not generalisations from experience. 
 
 This last position of Kant has been contested from the 
 experiential side. What remains incontestable is that, 
 besides the principles of Formal Logic, mathematical science 
 requires first principles peculiar to itself. The positions of 
 Locke, of Leibniz, and of Hume in the Inquiry, are abandoned 
 on this point. Kant's view as regards the peculiarity of 
 mathematical reasoning, it may be observed, had been in part 
 anticipated in the Platonic school. Plato himself had marked 
 off Mathematics from what he called Dialectic which was at 
 once Metaphysics and Logic on the one side, and from such 
 an adumbration of Physics as was then possible on the other. 
 Aristotle divided Metaphysics proper from Logic ; and by 
 Plato's successors, with the aid of the later Peripatetics,
 
 1 8a CLASSIFICATION OF THE SCIENCES 
 
 something was done to make clearer the precise character to 
 be ascribed to mathematical truth. An intermediate position 
 was assigned to it between laws valid for pure thinking, which 
 are prior, and " laws of nature " emerging from observation or 
 experiment, which are posterior. These distinctions were to 
 some extent obscured in the early modern period, but may 
 now be considered as restored, though it cannot be said that 
 definitive conclusions have yet been reached. It is hence- 
 forth clear, however, that the character of the special logic 
 which belongs to Mathematics can only be determined by an 
 investigation like that of Kant's Transcendental ^Esthetic. 
 Such an investigation is necessarily metaphysical. Psycho- 
 logical theories of the origin of space as a mental form can at 
 most furnish hints towards fixing the problem. Whatever the 
 final result may be, Kant has determined the method of the 
 inquiry. 
 
 For the classification of the sciences, it is sufficient to note 
 that mathematical truth, though " material " and no longer 
 purely " formal," does not yet suffice to determine anything 
 whatever about the order of nature. This was fully recog- 
 nised by Kant, who saw that before even " synthetic " proposi- 
 tions regarding space and number can be applied to pheno- 
 mena, certain other general maxims, beyond both these and 
 the laws of thought, are needed. The case may be illustrated 
 as when we were discussing the applicability of the Law of 
 Contradiction. Let us suppose ourselves to have the power 
 of counting, and of drawing figures in an imaginary space. 
 Then, if we can provide our constructions with names, and 
 can somehow communicate with similar intelligences, we may 
 work out a system of pure arithmetical and geometrical truth. 
 But suppose that, so far as external nature is concerned, we 
 are confronted with an absolute and lawless flux. Then we 
 can do nothing whatever with our mathematical system. It is 
 of no use to us that the results of counting and of drawing 
 follow with necessity, if numerable things alter their number 
 from moment to moment and figured things change their 
 shapes at random. For abstract geometrical truth indeed it 
 is not required that perfect triangles and perfect circles should 
 exist in nature; but, for applicability of deductions about 
 those geometrical figures, things marked out with figures that 
 approximate to them must retain their shapes long enough for 
 the deductions to be also approximately applicable during a 
 time that is not merely infinitesimal.
 
 CLASSIFICATION OF THE SCIENCES 183 
 
 To give us the least rudiment of physical or natural science, 
 we evidently require some recognisable perdurability or con- 
 stancy in things. This requirement is now expressed as the 
 Uniformity of Nature. In antiquity it found expression partly 
 in very slight outlines of a logic of Induction, but most 
 expressly in axioms of which the general form was that nothing 
 is produced from nothing and that nothing can return to 
 nothing. This conception goes back to the beginnings of the 
 Ionian physics. For the history of modern science, its most 
 important ancient phase was Atomism. The physics of 
 Democritus and Epicurus, ready to the hand of scientific 
 philosophers at the opening of the modern era, grew into the 
 corpuscular Mechanics of the seventeenth century. Taken up 
 again by Dal ton from Newton, it received its most accurate 
 and verifiable expression in the atomic theory of modern 
 Chemistry. Meanwhile, with Descartes and the Cartesian 
 school, there had come into clear view for the first time the 
 idea of formulating a law of indestructibility of motion, as it 
 was then put. For " motion " or momentum, Leibniz sub- 
 stituted vis viva or "force." At length, in the nineteenth 
 century, the anticipated law was accurately formulated as the 
 law of the Conservation of Energy. That Matter and Energy 
 are alike perdurable through all change is not, however, 
 sufficient for scientific uniformity. A law of sequence among 
 the changes themselves is also needed. This has been ex- 
 pressed as the Law of Causation, and, in this expression, has 
 been made a fundamental principle of Inductive Logic. In 
 the modern development of the Logic of Induction, the great 
 names are those of Bacon, Hume, Comte and Mill. Since 
 Mill, we have a logic of the investigation of nature comparable, 
 in its systematic character, with the formal logic of Aristotle. 
 
 In their investigation of the subjective grounds of the 
 principle of Uniformity, Hume and Mill applied themselves 
 more specially to the philosophical or metaphysical problem. 
 To Bacon must be ascribed distinctively the idea of methodical 
 induction, in contrast with " induction by simple enumera- 
 tion," and to Comte the idea of a scientifically certain or 
 positive " law " of phenomena. On the metaphysical question 
 there is now perhaps more agreement among philosophers 
 than appears. Experientialists do not uphold Mill's view 
 that the Uniformity of Nature is itself established by an 
 induction from particulars ; and the successors of Kant on 
 their side do not think that experience can be constituted by
 
 1 84 CLASSIFICATION OF THE SCIENCES 
 
 mental forms or " categories " applied to a chaos of given 
 sensations. Kant's position as against Hume being conceded 
 to this extent, that experience has its formal elements which 
 are as real as the matter of perception, Kantians or 
 Hegelians hardly contend for more. The categories, they 
 themselves allow, are immanent in experience, and do not 
 need to be imposed on it from without. Indeed the notion 
 that Hume was a pure sceptic without serious belief in 
 scientific truth, or that Kant held nature to be a chaos put 
 in order by the individual human mind, would be allowed to 
 be too " schematic," and not agreeable to the deeper drift of 
 the thinkers themselves. Were " the given " a chaos, no sub- 
 jective forms, call them " necessary " or not, could set it in 
 order. Nor does it seem reasonable on the other hand that, 
 if there are no intelligible laws to which it is really conform- 
 able, the modes of formulating it suggested from time to 
 time by some of its casual conjunctions should agree so well 
 with the rest. To maintain that there is now an approach 
 to unanimity on these points may seem paradoxical. But, 
 in the end, what historical reason is there for expecting that 
 the opposition between a priori and a posteriori methods, or 
 between Rationalism and Experientialism, will be the one 
 permanent line of cleavage between philosophic schools ? 
 
 After the logic of the sciences come the positive sciences 
 as such. The first question that arises with respect to these 
 concerns the position of Mechanics. Shall we, with Comte, 
 place at the end of the mathematical sciences Rational 
 Mechanics ? Or shall we separate Mechanics as a whole from 
 Mathematics, and make it the fundamental department of 
 Physics? It seems to me that the incontestable portion of 
 Kant's mathematical doctrine necessitates the second position. 
 With Mechanics comes in the conception of "mass," which 
 cannot be educed from space as a pure form of intuition, but 
 has direct reference to data of sense supplied by the feelings 
 of pressure and touch. Yet Comte's view was not altogether 
 ungrounded. The higher ^branches of mathematics, such as 
 those that deal with infinitesimals and with imaginary 
 quantities, have been elaborated, as Prof. Bain has pointed 
 out, in close connexion with physical investigations, and 
 often for the sake of solving definite physical problems. 
 Everything except their primary assumptions may have been 
 evolved by pure mathematical construction and formal 
 reasoning'; but, if the assumptions themselves are not
 
 CLASSIFICATION OF THE SCIENCES 185 
 
 congruous with the physical order of nature, the theories 
 as a whole remain mere curiosities, and can scarcely be 
 regarded as in any proper sense " true." The reason for 
 including them in Mathematics while excluding Rational 
 Mechanics seems, however, to be this. In Rational Me- 
 chanics the idea of a moving mass is fundamental. In 
 Mathematics, whatever may be the manner in which -any 
 of its peculiar assumptions are finally selected as worthy to 
 form the ground of a special theory, they can be treated 
 actually as determinations of space and number without 
 direct reference to mass. This is of course the normal 
 relation of a simpler to a more complex science. The fact 
 that the more complex science furnishes it with some of its 
 problems does not destroy its logical priority. 
 
 Under Mechanics come the Laws of Motion and the 
 Theory of Gravitation. The latter theory was first definitely 
 attained as the result of investigations in the concrete science 
 of Astronomy. This, again, illustrates the relation just re- 
 ferred to. Gravity belongs to General Physics in so far as 
 its theory, once attained, can be stated and worked out with 
 reference to hypothetical masses, and without taking account 
 of the actual masses and distances, empirically ascertained, 
 of particular bodies in the universe. This distinction, in- 
 sisted on by Mr. Spencer, was adumbrated in ancient schemes, 
 Peripatetic or Platonic, by the division of the rational theory 
 of the Sphere from Astronomy regarded as a partially em- 
 pirical science; though the ancient distinction agreed more 
 nearly with Comte's view in so far as the doctrine of the 
 Sphere was assigned to Mathematics. 
 
 The divisions of Special Physics are in part determined 
 by the particular senses receptive of the phenomena grouped 
 together. Light, heat and sound refer unambiguously to 
 the senses of sight, temperature and hearing. These senses 
 are not, indeed, allowed a share in the scientific explanation, 
 which is referred to the so-called "primary qualities of matter," 
 appreciated by the senses of touch and pressure ; but without 
 them the phenomena could not for us have been grouped 
 together at all. Several senses being given, however, com- 
 bined observations enable us to mark off other groups of 
 phenomena which do not, as such, appear to a particular 
 sense. Metaphor apart, we have no sensations of attraction 
 or repulsion. Hence gravitation could not be directly observed, 
 but had to be inferred from its effects in the form of pressure
 
 1 86 CLASSIFICATION OF THE SCIENCES 
 
 or motion. Electrical and magnetic phenomena have had to 
 be indirectly appreciated in more various ways. Their 
 common features once known, they could be made the subject 
 of a branch of Special Physics, referred, like the others, to 
 Mechanics or General Physics as fundamental. The reason 
 why Mechanics is thus fundamental seems to consist essentially 
 in the more permanently numerable and measurable character 
 of the phenomena of perception that are its material. 
 
 Of Chemistry we may say generally that it deals with the 
 compositions and decompositions of kinds of matter ; whereas 
 molecular Physics deals with states of aggregation of particles 
 conceived as all alike. The complex way, however, in which 
 Chemistry furnishes problems to Physics makes the borders 
 of the two sciences difficult to define. For the perception 
 of the qualitative changes going with changes of composition, 
 it is worthy of note that the senses of taste and smell are 
 of account along with the others. As is of course the case 
 also in the special branches of Physics, no demonstration 
 that modified arrangements of simple particles accompany 
 the qualitatively different phenomena can annul their actual 
 differences of quality. Hence, even if matter as it must be 
 for Mechanics were found to be everywhere ultimately 
 homogeneous, this would not efface the division between 
 Chemistry and Physics. 
 
 With Comte we must add to the list of objective sciences 
 that are fundamental and abstract the science of Life. For 
 vital phenomena are distinguishable from chemical as these 
 from physical phenomena by presenting a new problem of 
 general form, and not merely particular empirical aggregations 
 to be explained by combining and applying the orders of 
 scientific truth already determined. The general problem of 
 Biology is fixed by the nature of living organisms, which, 
 as such, manifest what can only in fact be described as an 
 "immanent end." The parts of an organism act together 
 in such a way that the union of their functions maintains, 
 against resistances that do not overpass certain limits, the 
 continuous existence of an individualised whole. This con- 
 sensus of functions clearly presents a higher problem than 
 those of Chemistry and Physics, inasmuch as we get no hint 
 from any special sense or combination of senses for the 
 demarcation of it. The preceding sciences furnish the 
 instruments for dealing with the problem of organic life 
 in detail ; but that problem itself does not admit of a state-
 
 CLASSIFICATION OF THE SCIENCES 187 
 
 ment wholly resolving it into problems of Physics and 
 Chemistry. And theories of the Evolution of Life cannot, 
 of course, explain how there come to be living forms at all 
 in distinction from the other objects in nature ; nor, on the 
 positive side, how those forms are transmuted so as to become, 
 when considered in relation to the general conception of an 
 organism, more "organic." What they really set forth is 
 certain conditions depending on the existence of many kinds 
 of organisms together in space and time. Those conditions 
 being known, and the general ideological nature of an 
 organism being given, the account of living forms on earth 
 can be immensely simplified; but the distinctive problem is 
 not removed in this way any more than it is by the detailed 
 study of physico-chemical processes in the particular organism. 
 Of late, as it would be easy to show, philosophical Biology 
 has become more and not less convinced of the irreducibility 
 of its problem. 
 
 The transition from Biology to Psychology is marked by the 
 introduction of a new method. To observation and experiment, 
 the methods of the physical and natural sciences, there is 
 added introspection. This peculiar method is the condition 
 of there being a science of Psychology at all. It has indeed 
 been ascertained that the physiological functions of the brain 
 are in some way concomitants of what is known to us intro- 
 spectively as mind ; but no observation of those functions, 
 and no experiments, would have revealed the existence of 
 mind in special relation with organisms if mental phenomena 
 had not been known to us through cur having reflected en 
 them. Hence the proper name of the new science is not 
 Cerebral Physiology, but Psychology. 
 
 By " Animal Psychology " in the diagram is not meant 
 Comparative Psychology, or the study of the various mani- 
 festations of mind in different species of animals. This is a 
 "concrete science." The fundamental or abstract science 
 in relation to it is constituted by the study of mental synthesis 
 in general previous to the formation of the Concept. Without 
 this kind of synthesis, the actual phenomena of the human 
 mind would, of course, be inexplicable ; and, as it is common 
 to man and at least the higher animals, the abstract science 
 that deals with it may from that circumstance receive a 
 name. Under this head may be studied the elements con- 
 tributed to mind by the senses, and their grouping in ac- 
 cordance with the laws of association first ascertained by
 
 1 88 CLASSIFICATION OF THE SCIENCES 
 
 analysis of the phenomena of memory. Here already we 
 have elementary forms of Emotion and Will, and of Reason 
 as intelligent adaptation of actions to practical ends. The 
 higher, and properly human, form of intelligence appears 
 only with conceptual Thought. 
 
 To the Psychology of Man the transition is through 
 Sociology, regarded as a fundamental and abstract science. 
 Comparison of the various forms of human society is a con- 
 crete science, like Comparative Psychology. The fundamental 
 character of Sociology is proved by its introducing a new mode 
 of relation, namely, the relation between organisms that live in 
 community and become capable of intellectual converse. In 
 the evolution of human society, we must suppose that the 
 passage has taken place from vague interchange of feeling and 
 co-operation for common ends, to mutual understanding of 
 ideas and fixation of a system of signs by which thought can 
 control action. From the uttered sound associated with an 
 image has been evolved the word which stands for a concept. 
 
 On Human Psychology the remark may suffice for the 
 present that of course the power of conceptual thought modifies 
 everything else. Perception, emotion and will are quite other 
 in man than they would be in an animal with only " generic 
 images " in the place of general ideas, and with only intelligent 
 adaptation in the place of discursive thinking. The phases of 
 the human mind called Emotion and Will point to ^Esthetic 
 Philosophy and to Practical Philosophy (Ethics and Politics), 
 as the phase of Thought points to Metaphysics. Here the last 
 only, as having a more fundamentally theoretical character, 
 comes directly into view. 
 
 While Psychology, with its peculiar method, first shows us 
 the outlet or the inlet to reality, it is Metaphysics that gives 
 the direct theory of reality. From metaphysical analysis of 
 knowledge in general there results the doctrine known as 
 Idealism. All the " objects " of the positive sciences are 
 resolved into appearances, related in forms which, like the 
 elements related, are such only for Mind. So far as the 
 material elements of knowledge are concerned, idealistic 
 doctrine seems to owe most to English Experiential Philosophy. 
 For the theory of relations or forms, it owes most to Kant and 
 the " Intellectualists." The truth in both lines of thought may 
 be summed up in the position that, as the relations between 
 the elements of experience are just as real, so also they are just 
 as ideal, as the elements.
 
 CLASSIFICATION OF THE SCIENCES 189 
 
 That Metaphysics must include Ontology as well as Theory 
 of Knowledge is again becoming clear. Evidence of this is to 
 be found in the frankly speculative attitude taken up by Mr. 
 Bradley as the representative of one view, and by Mr. 
 McTaggart as the representative of the other, on the question 
 of the Immortality of the Soul, relegated by Kant with all other 
 ontological questions to the Practical Reason. As an aid 
 towards reclaiming the province of Ontology for Metaphysics, 
 it may be worth while to attempt to contribute to the proof 
 independently, as I think, of what is sectional in any philo- 
 sophic school that the question, whether the individual soul 
 is permanent, is accessible from the speculative side. 
 
 Acceptance merely of Idealism and of the formal Laws of 
 Thought would not, it seems to me, give us sufficient grounds 
 for approaching it. We need some real proposition about 
 mind. Now if all that is is ultimately mental, and if at the 
 same time no permanence beyond the moment can be asserted 
 of that which is, then the hypothetical position in which we 
 should have been if furnished with formal truths, but confronted 
 with a material chaos, becomes actual. There is no reason, 
 however, to acquiesce in this result. As against it, we can 
 explicitly state an axiom or postulate which certainly is not 
 devoid of meaning : namely, that there is a whole of Mind 
 and that that whole is perdurable. This seems, both in itself 
 and from scientific analogy, the most reasonable position. It 
 is already laid down in Plato's Phado, though in a form which, 
 through its close union with direct examination of the arguments 
 for the permanence of the individual soul, has given critics 
 trouble to disentangle. Thus it is, historically, nearly as old 
 as the axiom of the physical perdurability of Matter. The 
 Conservation of Energy, with its apparently intermediate 
 position between physics and metaphysics, was naturally much 
 later to receive satisfactory statement. Appearing for long in 
 the guise of propositions about the ambiguous entity called 
 " force," with its suggestion at once of inherence in matter 
 and of subjective activity, it had to be defined as an altogether 
 phenomenal truth, and thrown over to the objective side, 
 before scientific clearness could be attained. Given the per- 
 durability of Mind, as distinguished at once from the merely 
 formal axiom of Identity, that A is A, and from the axioms, 
 having reference to the object-world, that Matter and Energy 
 persist in time, we can now state intelligibly the further ques- 
 tions : Are individual minds or souls alternately segregated
 
 1 90 CLASSIFICATION OF THE SCIENCES 
 
 from the whole of Mind and re-absorbed into it ; there being 
 thus emergence and cessation of ever new intrinsic differences ? 
 Or do they represent permanent distinctions, through changes 
 of phenomenal manifestation, within a total intellectual system ? 
 To state the questions is not of course to answer them ; but, 
 once the general axiom of perdurability is admitted, they 
 become accessible to the laws of thought. The criterion 
 seems to be, Which supposition is most thinkable in accord- 
 ance with the nature of mind ? 
 
 To return now to a topic just raised under the head of 
 Psychology. The amended classification of the sciences here 
 proposed seems to exclude Practical and ^Esthetic Philosophy. 
 Yet these too have a scientific or speculative aspect, as on the 
 other hand Metaphysics and Logic, which are included, may 
 be treated not only as speculative sciences but as disciplines 
 regulative of thought. Again, no place has been found in the 
 diagram for the concrete and applied sciences. The answer to 
 these objections is that any arrangement in space must neces- 
 sarily be inadequate to the true order of the sciences, both 
 positive and philosophical; since all of them together have 
 their existence in mind or the unextended. A diagram can 
 only serve as an aid to mental conception : it does not directly 
 show forth the real order. This is partly but not fully ad- 
 mitted by Mr. Spencer in relation to his own scheme when he 
 says that a true classification of the sciences ought to be figured 
 in three dimensions, and not on a surface. For not only do 
 his tables, as he himself notes, exclude subjective psychology, 
 which he regards as co-extensive with all the objective sciences 
 and antithetical to them ; but, more than this, the use of a 
 model in three dimensions would not enable him to bring it 
 in. 
 
 The present adaptation of Comte's scheme to a more 
 metaphysical doctrine and indeed the original scheme itself 
 does not seem to be necessarily in rivalry with Mr. Spencer's. 
 When it is recognised that every diagrammatic representation 
 must be inadequate, the two classifications may very well be 
 taken as expressions of different points of view. For philo- 
 sophical use, Comte's point of view has this advantage. It 
 brings out clearly that the sciences, in their ideal order, form 
 a single organism of knowledge to which each is subservient. 
 Mr. Spencer's scheme, on its side, brings out what is also a 
 perfectly real aspect of science ; namely, its tendency to branch 
 into divergent specialties, which arrange themselves like groups
 
 CLASSIFICATION OF THE SCIENCES 191 
 
 of organisms at the termination of a process of biological 
 evolution. This, however, is a less important aspect for the 
 philosopher. And to keep it primarily in view seems less con- 
 ducive to the reception of science into the system of general 
 culture. 
 
 When the sciences are thought of as organically related 
 to a whole, the advantages of the circular arrangement are 
 easy to see. For this by no means indicates a definitively 
 closed system. On the contrary, it might have served as the 
 least inadequate representation from the time when cosmic 
 science or philosophy first began vaguely to differentiate into 
 particular sciences. New sciences would thus be seen intro- 
 ducing themselves in accordance with that process of " intus- 
 susception " by which a biological organism grows, and which 
 Kant regarded as the true process of development for an architec- 
 tonic system of knowledge. This, and not the direct historical 
 succession of the sciences in agreement with their logical order, 
 has been the real course of intellectual history. The supposi- 
 tion that the logical order of the sciences and the historical 
 order in which they become " positive " are one and the same, 
 is a defect in Comte's classification as it stands ; though, as may 
 now be seen, it is unessential to the use of it. There is no 
 difficulty indeed in fixing arbitrarily the time when a science is 
 positively constituted, and thus making the two orders seem to 
 agree; but, if we view the facts impartially, the supposition 
 that they do agree may be easily refuted. Chemistry, for 
 example, is logically prior to Biology ; yet it was later to be- 
 come a coherent body of doctrine. And Psychology, even in 
 its higher department, is an older science than Sociology ; 
 which indeed is even now little more than inchoate, so that the 
 definite place assigned to it in the series is still somewhat in 
 advance of the facts. The sciences have not waited for one 
 another, as Comte appears to have imagined, but have started 
 up at intervals as occasion brought them into view ; the higher 
 sciences contenting themselves, if the lower were not " ready," 
 with a few approximations to their laws, or in the meantime 
 'taking leaps in the dark. And at every stage since Greek 
 science began, there has been some kind of general philosophy 
 in more or less friendly relation with the special sciences. 
 
 Finally, it might be contended that something like the 
 arrangement proposed has always been implicit in educated 
 thought. To make out a case, it would only be necessary to 
 point to the etymology of the word " encyclopaedia."
 
 TELEOLOGY AND THE 
 INDIVIDUAL 
 
 Owe Howe ' T) 0!;<ris ^7rewo5i(65ijs o&cra K r&v <paivo/j.&uv , wcnrfp /j.ox6ijpa 
 . Arist Met. xiv. 3, 1090 b 19. 
 
 KANT'S treatment of final causes in the Critique of Judgment 
 is as classical for modern times as that of Aristotle for 
 antiquity. Thus it is the inevitable starting-point for any new 
 discussion of the topic. Complex as the third Critique is in 
 itself, the general position that results from it can be stated in 
 a few words. The human mind necessarily makes use of the 
 conception of an end or " final cause " in its explanation or 
 description of an organism ; but this conception has not full 
 theoretical validity. Perhaps an " intuitive intelligence " might 
 be able to view nature as through and through mechanically 
 determined. Apparent teleology, seen especially in organisms, 
 runs out into aesthetic contemplation of nature; but for the 
 speculative reason it has no " constitutive " value. Primarily, 
 the bearing of the idea of end is practical. The mechanical 
 principles, however, which have for nature the highest 
 theoretical warrant, not only cannot now explain, but 
 demonstratively will never be able to explain for any human 
 mind, the simplest process that is distinctively vital. For the 
 sciences of organic life, the conception of final cause will 
 always be a necessity. 
 
 Kant's "hard-and-fast" divisions are by his successors 
 laid aside : and this is often supposed to tell in 
 favour of some view subordinating everything to practice. 
 If there is no rigorous demarcation between the " practical " 
 and the "speculative," then, it is straightway assumed, we 
 must declare every explanation to be ultimately practical, the 
 mechanical just as much as the teleological explanation. 
 But why not attempt a precisely opposite correction ? If
 
 TELEOLOGY AND THE INDIVIDUAL 193 
 
 there are no such hard-and-fast lines, Ideological explanations, 
 though starting immediately from our knowledge of our own 
 practical activity, must have a speculative character of their 
 own, no less than mechanical ones. Their degree of 
 theoretical validity remains to be determined. The rigid 
 lines having gone, we can ask which " category," teleology or 
 mechanism, comes nearer to the truth of reality, and what are 
 their other superiorities or inferiorities. We have returned 
 to something more like the position of Aristotle, by whom the 
 ideological account of organisms was regarded as one form of 
 theoretical science, and not as a kind of intruder, though an 
 inevitable one, in the scientific domain. 
 
 To appeal finally to the decision of theoretical reason, so 
 far as this can be distinguished from other manifestations of 
 reason, does not mean that we are to ignore systematically the 
 problems suggested by aesthetic or practical views. Such 
 views may start questions to which the speculative reason can 
 give some, though not a perfect, answer. Its answer, by the 
 seeker of speculative truth, must be accepted in the last resort. 
 In metaphysics we must not ask first, what alternatives are 
 theoretically possible, and then decide, in the absence of any 
 other test, for that which conforms to our aspirations. Rather 
 we must ask, whether a view conformable to our aspirations 
 can be consistently thought. If it can, we must still try to 
 adjust our belief exactly to the evidence, and not choose it 
 with a weighted volition that goes beyond. 
 
 " Final cause," then, presents itself to us, within a certain 
 range, as a known fact. We have the thought of a modifica- 
 tion to be produced in perceptible objects ; and the production 
 of that modification takes place after we have thought of it, 
 and somehow in consequence of our idea as a contributory 
 cause. And such cases are not merely sporadic. There is a 
 whole class of events, called " volitions," of which this is the 
 general description. One idea which, through intermediate 
 mental and physical modifications, is at the origin of many 
 actions, is the generalised idea of conserving the organism. 
 The previous existence of this as a directing thought con- 
 tributes, through what we call " means," to realise the "end;" 
 that is, to maintain the continued existence of the organic 
 system called the body. The view can be further generalised. 
 The working of the body, beneath our voluntary muscular 
 actions, is made up of all sorts of physical and chemical 
 processes : and these, we find, conspire in the absence of 
 
 13
 
 i 9 4 TELEOLOGY AND THE INDIVIDUAL 
 
 conscious direction to effect what would be our " end " if we 
 had control over them. We can apply the same conception to 
 animal organisms, without necessarily supposing them to 
 possess conscious ends of a generalised kind at all. Further, 
 we can apply it to plants, which we do not even suppose to be 
 conscious in the ordinary meaning of the word, much less to 
 have conscious ends. That is to say : if we were in the place 
 of the lower animal or the plant, and desired to preserve the 
 existence of the system supposed to be our body, we should, 
 if we could, with this end in view, combine the physical and 
 chemical processes exactly as they are combined. Or if, 
 standing outside, we had in our minds as an object of desire 
 the preservation of such an organic system, and had control 
 over its internal processes, we should control them precisely 
 thus. This is summed up by saying that all living organisms, 
 from the highest to the lowest whatever else they may have 
 have an " immanent end." 
 
 So far teleology seems to be quite scientific. It is merely 
 a generalised statement of facts and events. But can we go 
 deeper ? Is this appearance an illusion ? Must the ultimate 
 explanation be found in a purely mechanical transmission of 
 motion, capable of being stated according to laws which are 
 not teleological ? 
 
 Clearly this cannot be the ultimate explanation ; and, 
 whatever advance knowledge may make, can never become 
 so. For explanations in terms of mechanism are merely 
 phenomenal : whereas teleological explanations, though these 
 too must not be assumed to be ultimate, take account of 
 something known to us as more than phenomenally real 
 namely, a process of mind. Even where this cannot strictly 
 be known, they suppose something vaguely in analogy with it. 
 Thus, while they have nothing like the minuteness and accuracy 
 of the mechanical explanations, they have more reality in a 
 metaphysical sense. A mechanical process is ultimately, under 
 analysis, nothing but an observed or inferred co-existence 
 and sequence of appearances, having a certain constancy. 
 Appearances generally are combinations of presented and 
 represented sense-elements which we "project," as portions 
 of our perceived " external world," according to psychological 
 law. We reduce this varied object to " mechanism " by 
 abstraction ; that is to say, we bring it to a calculable form 
 by taking away a considerable part even of what is actual or 
 possible appearance to our own minds or to human minds in
 
 TELEOLOGY AND THE INDIVIDUAL 195 
 
 general. From this denuded "mechanical" world we can 
 never get back by a rational procedure even to the whole of 
 phenomena; let alone to the mental reality which we observe 
 in ourselves introspectively or infer to exist in others. 
 
 The foregoing argument of course implies the idealistic 
 contrast between the phenomena of the object-world, projected 
 in the form of space, and the reality of the mind as known by 
 introspection, for which objects are appearances. If it is said 
 that, at any rate, the appearances indicate something that is 
 not our own mind or the minds of other persons, the reply 
 must be that in no such way as this can the ultimate character 
 of mechanical explanations be defended. For these do not 
 take us to any "ground" beneath mere relations of phenomena. 
 And the phenomena themselves even are regarded not in their 
 fulness, but in extreme abstraction. 
 
 Let us, however, setting aside the idealistic criticism for a 
 moment, consider the emergence of organic groups in accord- 
 ance with Natural Selection. This is sometimes even by 
 men of science called a " mechanical " explanation, though it 
 is really of a more concrete character, and cannot be translated 
 in full into abstract mathematico-physical relations. In any 
 case, it does not resolve the fundamental teleology of organisms, 
 but assumes it. What it gets rid of scientifically is the so- 
 called " external teleology," which imagined organic forms to 
 be explained by the assertion that a quasi-human artificer had 
 adapted them to one another and to the conditions of life. 
 Natural Selection gives a scientific explanation of the origin 
 of species by showing how groups may come to be definitely 
 marked off through elimination of the multitudes of individuals 
 that cannot maintain themselves in competition with individuals 
 better adapted to the given circumstances. But those that are 
 eliminated are also, for the most part, quite capable of main- 
 taining themselves and of leaving offspring if they had fewer 
 competitors. Practically, all are expressions of an " immanent 
 teleology;" but the varying individuals vary in efficiency as 
 in other characters. Wonderful as was the anticipation by 
 Empedocles of natural selection as a general idea, nothing has 
 yet been found in organic nature corresponding to the endless 
 production, which he supposed, of monstrous births, hardly 
 any of which could live at all. If this had turned out to be 
 the order of things, more might have been said for the view 
 that apparent " end " or " final cause " is a merely casual result 
 of something resembling mechanism. But the facts, as
 
 196 TELEOLOGY AND THE INDIVIDUAL 
 
 observed, correspond rather to Aristotle's view that the 
 relatively few monstrous births produced indicate some material 
 obstacle, which causes the essentially teleological effort that 
 finds its expression in living things occasionally to miss the 
 mark. Human volition very frequently fails to reach what it 
 aimed at : and yet we do not say that there was no volition ; 
 nor do we say, when it hits the mark, that there was in it no 
 preconception of results. 
 
 Darwin, of course, never rejected teleology in the sense 
 defended. It merely did not come within his own biological 
 province ; belonging rather to that of the physiologist. Accord- 
 ing to an utterance related in his Life, the argument for the 
 reality of final causes sometimes appealed to him ; though at 
 other times he seemed to see nothing in it. This is intelligible, 
 since the great effect of his work was to explain in a different 
 manner a whole order of things which the cultivators of natural 
 history had been in the habit of explaining by teleology of an 
 illegitimate kind. 
 
 In its foundation, biology still remains the type of a teleo- 
 logical science. This means that it is a mixed science ; that 
 although in its whole structure it is phenomenal and objective, 
 it has nevertheless to use, implicitly or explicitly, as a directive 
 idea, something given to it by an elementary psychological 
 observation of the process in volition. In detail, physiology 
 proceeds by tracing the physico-chemical changes that carry- 
 on the life of the organism ; but without the conception of the 
 organism as an end to itself, kept in being by a set of 
 " functions " working together for their own continuance, there 
 would be no such scientific problem as that of "life." An 
 organism would be merely a portion of the object-world 
 accidentally detached, like a piece of rock for example. To 
 consider its perservation or non-preservation in any special way 
 would be of no interest. 
 
 Biology, once formed, reacts powerfully on psychology, which 
 now acquires a much more determinate teleological basis than 
 it would have had if limited to introspection. In fact, so far 
 as the idea of end can be carried through in psychology itself, 
 it owes most of its applicability to biology. To have insisted 
 on the fundamental character of the " organic individual " in 
 psychological science appears to me on reflection to be a 
 definite achievement of recent psychologists. In England it 
 may be assigned to Professors Ward and Stout. Some of their 
 predecessors, as I think they admit, have recognised the
 
 TELEOLOGY AND THE INDIVIDUAL 197 
 
 " conative " basis of the science ; but undoubtedly considerable 
 development of it was needed to correct a form of " associa- 
 tionism" which would have made teleology issue, as a last 
 result, from laws of mental process intrinsically not Ideological. 
 This admitted, however, there is room still for a plea on behalf 
 of the position that something is to be found in mind beyond 
 teleology. There are processes, both of mere association and 
 of thought, that have purely mental laws not reducible to 
 relations of end and means. A higher teleology beyond the 
 psycho-physiological may arise by which they become ends ; 
 but ends in the primary meaning of practical interests are not 
 their determinants from the beginning. Speculative interests, 
 if we like to call them so, spring out of a non-teleological mode 
 of mind. Not only pure thought, but mere reverie, may exist, 
 as we say, " for its own sake," and without having been brought 
 to be by adaptation to a desired result. We have risen to the 
 "super-organic," in a sense somewhat different from that of 
 Spencer. 
 
 By this association of ideas, which (as if to illustrate the 
 thesis maintained) presented itself unsought, we may go on 
 to the " super-organic " in its meaning of sociology. Here we 
 are brought again to a science which in one department like 
 biology in its physiological department in the absence of the 
 idea of end becomes mere chaos. It would not be quite true 
 to say this of psychology ; but it is true of historical science. 
 Organic development, conceived as a series of relations to 
 immanent ends, is here fundamental. The phenomena of 
 decadence and reaction do not alter the case, any more than 
 the phenomena of degeneration alter it in biology. This means 
 that we have here again a " mixed " science, with interaction 
 between conceptions belonging to the object and the subject. 
 Our demarcations of the sciences must evidently not be taken 
 in too rigorous a sense. 
 
 The ideological idea, as here adopted, seems to be secure 
 against the criticism contained in Prof. Adamson's Development 
 of Modern Philosophy (vol. ii. " Principles of Psychology," A. 
 chap. iii.). That criticism is effective against the notion that 
 any use can be made of the idea of a prefigured end towards 
 which the whole process of things is moving ; but the idea of 
 end in its " immanent " sense, as applied to the development 
 of the individual or of smaller or larger organic groups, appears 
 to be admitted by Adamson himself, only with some advance 
 in subtlety of statement.
 
 198 TELEOLOGY AND THE INDIVIDUAL 
 
 Teleology, according to the view that has been taken, finds 
 expression in the laws of every kind of organic system, from 
 individual organism to species; and in man again from the 
 organic individual through family and tribal groups to cities 
 and nations, and lastly, in an incipient way, to the whole of 
 humanity. Such groups are not mere aggregates, but can have 
 an intelligible end stated for them by a spectator identifying 
 himself in imagination with the group. This end is, at the 
 lowest, self-conservation. As the scale is ascended, it becomes 
 something more : " power " (as Hobbes expressed it), or 
 freedom, or positive happiness in practical or contemplative 
 activity. Such ends arrive at self-consciousness only in the 
 higher organic groups, and only in individuals among those 
 groups. 
 
 Can we go further and suppose a single Ideological system 
 in which all these systems are included so as to be adapted to 
 one another? This, as Kant showed, can only be done by 
 speculating in terms of an ideal. In thus speculating we go 
 beyond the region of positive science. Yet the whole of 
 organic life on earth, with its whole environment, does some- 
 how form part of one system, whether we call it teleological or 
 not. And the accomplishment of ends by individuals and 
 groups is dependent on the system with its mutual adaptations. 
 As to the nature of this system, the general truth seems to 
 have been first stated by Heraclitus, who declared that the 
 condition of there being a cosmos was strife. The later Greek 
 philosophic schools all adopted this view, putting it in their 
 own manner. Plato's recognition, in conformity with it, that 
 evils can never be expelled from the world, was enforced by 
 his successors with arguments of their own. Evil, said Proclus, 
 must always exist as a condition of the universal harmony, but 
 it must always be kept under. It is scarcely necessary to point 
 out the perfect agreement of the Darwinian " struggle for 
 existence " with this theodicy. 
 
 The term " theodicy," adopted by Leibniz, correctly describes 
 the thought of successive generations of Greek thinkers. From 
 an early period, there had been a tendency to bring even what 
 might seem merely physical under the head of "justice" and 
 " injustice." The general conclusion of reflective observers, 
 viewing life as a whole, was that a kind of justice can be seen 
 to run through it, but that this, according to human ideas, is 
 very imperfect. Both in their positive and negative utterances, 
 the Greeks are on this point in agreement with the most pene-
 
 TELEOLOGY AND THE INDIVIDUAL 199 
 
 trating of the Hebrews. Only among the Greeks, however, did 
 poetic reflection lead on to a sustained philosophic effort after 
 a solution. Plato, who first stated the problem in its generality, 
 conceived it on the whole as Kant did later. The reign of 
 absolute justice could not be seen if you looked for it directly 
 as a mere observer. The method must be, to set up an ideal 
 and then try whether you can think this as really governing 
 all that happens in the world. The test is that you preserve 
 self-consistency and consistency with the facts ; following 
 resolutely where reason leads. Plato's conclusion was that, 
 while actual life, if closely examined, works out far more 
 favourably to the just man than might be thought by a super- 
 ficial observer, yet a single individual life is not adequate to the 
 full accomplishment of justice. To this end, there must be a 
 permanent individual existence, for which the single life is only 
 one of a series. Over this series absolute justice rules. 
 
 By some thinkers the problem raised in the last place was 
 set aside. The Ideological order of the system of things } they 
 thought, manifests itself only in relation to such great organic 
 unities as cities and races. It does not take account of the 
 mere individual. Now of course a kind of historical justice is 
 most easily observable over a long time and where a great 
 multitude is considered. Plato himself recognised the pro- 
 visional value of such a point of view in proposing to consider 
 ideal justice in the city before dealing with it in the citizen. 
 But, as Proclus noted, while the virtues of the whole city are 
 those of the individual " writ large," they are in quality as dis- 
 tinguished from quantity at a greater remove from the ideal. 
 (Comm. in Remp., ed. Kroll, i. 217.) Thus, if we are to try 
 at all to find in the order of the world conformity to our 
 practical and aesthetic demands, we must seek in the destiny of 
 the individual a greater and not a less refinement of justice. 
 A theodicy applying only to races and cities and perhaps 
 families, would not satisfy us if it left the individual in a purely 
 accidental relation to the total organic unity in which he is 
 involved. This had long been an admitted point of view in 
 Greek speculation of a theological cast. And, as Proclus also 
 recognised, justice must not apply merely to man. There 
 must be some shadow of it in relation to the lower animals. 
 
 Before we can know how far there is room for imaginations 
 of " something like " this, we must try to determine whether 
 any immortality of the soul is possible. Can the permanence of 
 the individual be maintained on grounds of speculative reason ?
 
 200 TELEOLOGY AND THE INDIVIDUAL 
 
 The question is obviously not to be settled at once by 
 idealism. For it seems as if, on idealistic principles, individu- 
 ality might be some temporary phase in an impersonal whole 
 of mind. In order to start as far away as we can from any 
 position that would beg the question and issue in a purely 
 illusory deductive process, let us attempt a dogmatic use of 
 the sceptical result arrived at by Hume in the Treatise of 
 Human Natttre : namely, that no substance either of matter 
 or of mind need be assumed, but that the finally true realities 
 are the particular "perceptions" into which mind is resolved 
 by analysis. These themselves, as Hume points out expressly 
 (Bk. i. Pt. iv. sect. 5), we have no reason for supposing inex- 
 tinguishable. For anything that can be asserted a priori, 
 they, in common with every object we can imagine, may be 
 " annihilated in a moment." 
 
 On this last position Hume remarks that it leaves everything 
 "precisely as before." We may if we like take this in the 
 sense that it is permissible to try to find our way back to a 
 system by any axiom or postulate that seems to offer a foot- 
 hold ; though of course no one can be prevented from electing 
 to remain a pure sceptic, adopting only such practical principles 
 as may be necessary for the conduct of life. Now if the 
 method were chosen of asserting as true anything conceivable 
 on the given supposition, a positive doctrine of immortality 
 might be laid down compatibly even with this complete 
 disaggregation of mind. The existent perceptions may not be 
 wholly annihilated ; and they may continue, after the destruc- 
 tion of a particular organism (itself an illusory appearance), to 
 run together in the same apparent " form of personality." All 
 we need to do is to furnish ourselves with a practical motive 
 and make an assertion agreeable to it. Perhaps this was the 
 meaning of Hume's irony. I confess, however, that I should 
 prefer to remain a pure sceptic. Any axiom that it would 
 seem to me satisfactory to work with must present itself as 
 primarily intellectual. 
 
 An axiom of perdurability applied to the elements of mind 
 seems to have this character. Let us, then, posit as first 
 realities the " elementary feelings " of Clifford's " mind-stuff," 
 and declare these to be permanent. From their union minds 
 appear, and into them minds, if they perish as such, are 
 resolved. This view (as follows from what has been already 
 said) does not absolutely preclude continuance of the same 
 form of personality from one life to another ; though it does
 
 TELEOLOGY AND THE INDIVIDUAL 201 
 
 not in any way suggest it. Rather it suggests that death of 
 the organism is accompanied by final disaggregation of the 
 individual mind. Is the theory itself, however, in the end, 
 thinkable ? 
 
 Put in the extreme form provisionally adopted, it is not. 
 The best refutation has been furnished by Prof. W. James, 
 who has expressly discussed the question in his Principles of 
 Psychology. The conclusive argument is this. If the isolated 
 "elementary feeling" is the true reality, then relations between 
 feelings joined in a consciousness should be explicable from 
 the mere co-existence and succession of the feelings themselves. 
 But such co-existence and succession can take place without 
 bringing on the slightest tendency to permanent relation 
 between the feelings. Let different persons experience side 
 by side and in definite temporal order, feelings which, if thus 
 brought together in one consciousness, would give a total 
 conscious state with related parts: neither their co-existence 
 nor succession will, in the circumstances, produce any associa- 
 tion whatever. Thus consciousness, or the form of the 
 individual mind, remains just as unexplained as before. 
 Whatever it may be, it is something that makes a real differ- 
 ence to the feelings said to join themselves together in actual 
 minds. " Laws of association," instead of showing how it 
 emerges from the mere feelings, suppose it already there. 
 The theory so far does not lead us a step further. 
 
 Another way of conceiving the doctrine of mind-stuff was 
 slightly developed by me some time ago. Let us suppose the 
 " relations " of Spencer (or indeed of Hume) equally permanent 
 with the feelings related. Cannot the whole real or meta- 
 physical process of things be regarded as an evolution of a 
 " mind-stuff" consisting from the first not of isolated but of 
 related feelings ? The difficulty of this seems to be that we 
 still get no nearer to the explanation of the many individual 
 minds. Given a total of mind-stuff as the reality, its evolution 
 would always be that of a single individual. It may be said 
 that this is so ; that particular individuals are partially illusory 
 representations of the sole real experience. A view like this 
 has been thought to result from Hegelianism. But on this 
 theory also we need some explanation of apparent individuality. 
 
 Logically developed, the theory in this form seems indis- 
 tinguishable from a Spinozism in which the " attribute of 
 thought" is identified with "absolute subject" (rather than 
 " substance ") ; the attribute of extension being subordinated.
 
 202 TELEOLOGY AND THE INDIVIDUAL 
 
 This too, however, fails to yield an explanation of the individual 
 mind, at least on Spinozistic principles. " That thing," says 
 Spinoza (Eth. i. Def. 2), "is called in its kind finite which can 
 be bounded by another of the same nature. For example, a 
 body is called finite because we always conceive another 
 greater. Thus thought is bounded by other thought. (Sic 
 cogitatio alia cogitatione terminatur.) But body is not 
 bounded by thought nor thought by body." Now evidently 
 the organism is in this sense a finite thing, being marked off 
 from other bodies. But there is no such relation between the 
 particular mind, which according to Spinoza corresponds to it 
 in the attribute of thought, and other minds. For there is 
 no "boundary" between one mind and another, but each 
 corresponds to the universe. "The soul," as Aristotle said, 
 "is in a manner all things." The bounding of thought by 
 thought, in analogy with a corporeal limit, is intelligible, if at 
 all, only within each mind considered by itself. When Spinoza 
 later speaks of " our mind " as " an eternal mode of thinking, 
 which is determined by another eternal mode of thinking, and 
 this again by another, and thus to infinity ; so that all together 
 constitute the eternal and infinite intellect of God " (Eth. v. 
 Prop. 40, Schol.), we seem to have arrived at a fundamentally 
 different position, not capable of development from the first. 
 Individuality is asserted as a fact, but has not been deduced. 
 
 Perhaps this is inevitable. At any rate, segregation and re- 
 absorption of mind-atoms, and delimitation of infinite thought, 
 alike turn out to be inapplicable analogies from bodies dis- 
 tributed or diffused in space. Reconstitution of the individual 
 mind from the "particular perceptions" into which it was 
 apparently resolved, Hume himself did not think that he had 
 achieved ; and the successors on his own line have not further 
 advanced this particular problem. Mill, in his famous defini- 
 tion of consciousness as " a series aware of itself as a series," 
 in effect gave up the attempt; simply asserting individuality 
 in his own manner. But had Hume really disposed of the 
 " immaterial soul ?" Is the term henceforth superseded for the 
 metaphysician ? 
 
 Now it is remarkable that, in the section of the Treatise 
 referred to above, he only seems to dispose of it by showing 
 how the logical development of the conception would run into 
 Spinozism. This was meant to frighten the theologians of his 
 time ; and it succeeded. But suppose we have no objection 
 to regarding the particular soul as not a created thing, but in
 
 TELEOLOGY AND THE INDIVIDUAL 203 
 
 some sense an "eternal mode" of the Substance or Subject 
 that is all. If we are fairly to test the position, we must not 
 take the soul as understood in the Christian Scholastic com- 
 promise between a philosophically developed Platonism and 
 the dualistic assumptions required to square with the faith. 
 Some purely philosophical rendering of the doctrine must be 
 sought for. This test, it may be pointed out, Kant as well as 
 Hume failed to apply. Now we find such a purely philosophical 
 rendering in Berkeley ; whose theological purpose never caused 
 any deviation in the logic of his thinking. Hume, in his 
 destructive criticism of "personal identity," does not attempt 
 to deal with Berkeley's doctrine of the "notion." Of the 
 importance of this, indeed, Berkeley himself only became fully 
 conscious after his first writing of the Principles of Human 
 Knowledge ; as is shown by his later insertions. What Hume 
 treats as Berkeley's definitive "theory of knowledge" is the 
 position that we reason by means of " ideas." This theory, 
 however, Berkeley considered adequate only to the object- 
 world. About objects in general, we can reason by particular 
 " ideas," all of which are picturable. The use of these in 
 thinking is made possible by attention to them in a general 
 relation. The constant order that runs through our perceptions, 
 considered in this general aspect, constitutes our external 
 world. By closer attention to the precise conditions of per- 
 ceptions, in so far as they do not depend on each particular 
 mind, we substitute science for ordinary experience. There 
 must be, however, something to which the external world 
 appears. This is called a "spirit." Of spirits we have no 
 " ideas," but only an absolutely unpicturable " notion," 
 corresponding to no particular perception. Yet, for coherent 
 knowledge, we cannot do without subjects of phenomena. A 
 substance or subject, indicated, it may be, only by a word, 
 must yet be thus indicated because perceptions are as we 
 now say related in a consciousness. And, as has been seen, 
 the course of more recent thought has failed to substitute any 
 way of thinking by which we can dispense with such a " notion." 
 For positive psychology, at least in beginning its expositions, 
 the organism may suffice as a " bearer : " but the problems 
 raised by Berkeley and Hume do not find their adequate 
 solution in positive psychology. 
 
 Let us, then, adopting the position last cited from Spinoza, 
 try to conceive of the many " spirits " as interacting within a 
 system (called by Spinoza " Dei aeternus et infinitus
 
 204 TELEOLOGY AND THE INDIVIDUAL 
 
 intellectus "). These existences ("spirits" or "modes"), 
 according to Berkeley as well as Spinoza, are not limited to a 
 particular time. In fact, immediate experience suggests to us 
 the notion of a subject which goes into latency (as in sleep) 
 and returns from it. Why then should we limit their duration 
 at all ? As they are not deducible either from " infinite 
 intellect" on the one side, or from hypothetical elements 
 reached by analysis on the other, the consequence seems to be 
 that the whole of mind must be thought of as always intrinsi- 
 cally pluralised. And, since the " modes " by which it is 
 pluralised are distinct, they too, if we are to retain our general 
 axiom of perdurability, must be regarded as permanent. Thus 
 the whole of mind, that is, of reality, contains in itself many 
 permanently real modes or spirits, without ceasing to be a 
 whole and a system. 
 
 Evidently, on the principles of immaterialism, the conditions 
 expressed as space and matter will not enable us to explain 
 the pluralising of mind. The organism is merely one figured 
 portion of the " waking dream " (Berkeley, Siris, 318) which 
 expresses the interaction of the "subjects" composing reality. 
 Its relation to the subject is not properly that of effect to 
 cause, any more than of cause to effect, if we use the terms in 
 their scientific or phenomenal sense : it is that of phenomenon 
 or manifestation to noumenon. The word "cause" indeed 
 was used in the sense of noumenon by Kant himself, after he 
 had formally drawn the distinction. It had been used already 
 in this sense by the Neo-Platonists. Comte proposed to 
 expel it from philosophical or scientific language precisely on 
 account of the tinge of " metaphysics " that clings to it. Still, 
 if a serious effort is made, consistent use of it in the 
 phenomenal sense does not seem difficult to maintain ; though 
 occasional relapses into popular language (which is more 
 " metaphysical ") ought not to be found very misleading. 
 
 Thus we do not seem to need any " substance " except the 
 intangible and unfigured " subject " to which phenomena 
 appear. The ways in which this could go out of existence 
 without diminishing the whole of being, seem to be strictly 
 unknowable. We cannot dogmatically assert that there are 
 no such ways ; but we are at least entitled to attempt an 
 ontological theory on the ground of what can be coherently 
 thought. To complete the scale of being, it will no doubt be 
 necessary to suppose, at a lower grade than Berkeley's self- 
 conscious " spirits," not only permanent souls of animals, but
 
 TELEOLOGY AND THE INDIVIDUAL 205 
 
 also " monads," as Leibniz called them, corresponding to the 
 things that appear as inorganic. These are not "material 
 substances" in Berkeley's sense. Their real being is an 
 activity analogous to that of the subject. Phenomenally, the 
 rendering of this may be "energy." And, if we are to 
 speculate on this line, the conjecture may be thrown out that 
 the phenomenal rendering of subjective being when its activity 
 becomes latent is " entropy," or unavailable energy. If there 
 is anything that can be wholly set over against soul or mind 
 or spirit, it seems to be a kind of real " not-being," such as 
 the Platonic or Neo-Platonic " matter." Berkeley, in his later 
 speculations, did not reject the thought that there might be a 
 place for this matter of the " incorporeaiists." If it were to be 
 again introduced, as has sometimes been proposed, its meaning 
 would be that of a descriptive formula expressive of the fact 
 that non-spatial subjects come to present themselves as if set 
 apart from one another, in union with certain bounded groups 
 of phenomena in space. Something very like this is to be 
 found in Kant's space considered as a "form -of intuition," 
 within which the subject is necessitated to present phenomena 
 to itself. For within space as a common form, the individual 
 subject associates one group of phenomena (namely, its 
 organism) with itself; inferring the existence of other subjects 
 in association with similar appearances. Kant's spatial 
 " form " is not the same as the empty, objective space called 
 by Plato the recipient of the ideas ; and, though it has more 
 points of resemblance to the Neo-Platonic " matter," it is not 
 quite identical with it : but it occupies the same position in the 
 system. A thorough assimilation of any of these doctrines 
 would equally set us free from " parallelism," of the Cartesian 
 type, between " extension " and " thought " conceived as 
 co-ordinate realities. The metaphor suggested, instead of 
 parallel straight lines, would be that of circumference and 
 centre (or, as the Platonists said, the region near the centre) ; 
 the former representing material objects and the latter intellect. 
 A taste for paradoxical expression might suggest that, accord- 
 ing to this view, the two poles of reality are mind or the 
 unextended, and nature or the non-existent. 
 
 What the Sophist called the non-existence of nature is, 
 however, like its existence, relative. Actual or possible 
 " natural phenomena " do not themselves constitute a process 
 of real evolution : yet we must suppose a real process to go 
 on through the activities of the subjects to whom are presented
 
 206 TELEOLOGY AND THE INDIVIDUAL 
 
 the phases of the cosmic dream. How this process is to be 
 conceived metaphysically is a genuine problem for speculation, 
 though it may admit of no positive solution. A theory 
 worked out by the Orientalist Emile Burnouf (in La Vie et 
 la Pensee) was that the same "monads" become successively 
 incarnate in the ascending stages of animal life, till at length 
 they reach the stage of man, to be followed, at the next great 
 geological epoch, by that of " super-man." Another possible 
 view is that the "Ideas of individuals" (in Platonic phrase) 
 do not evolve so as to pass from one specific grade to another, 
 but become by turns manifest in a phenomenal world as the 
 process brings on the grouping of scenery adapted to new 
 actors in the drama. In this case equally, of course, the 
 apparent or physical corresponds to a real or metaphysical 
 process. Either view is consistent with the facts of biological 
 evolution, which refers directly only to the organisms evolved. 
 If indeed the consciousness of the offspring could be explained 
 by deriving it from the consciousness of the parents, the whole 
 would be an affair of positive science, and we should have no 
 need for a metaphysic of heredity. But no such explanation 
 has ever been offered in psychological terms. 
 
 Speculation has thus brought us to conceive the possibility 
 that permanent individual subjects may have successive lives 
 through which could be seen, if we knew them, a teleological 
 order resembling that which is manifested in societies to the 
 insight of a philosophic historian. As in the successive genera- 
 tions of a progressive or decadent civilisation, so in the case 
 of the individual, the acquirement or non-acquirement of 
 knowledge and virtue in one life would have its effect on the 
 next. It might even be rendered conceivable that, at a certain 
 elevation in the scale of being, consciousness and memory 
 should go on in some phenomenal world from one life to 
 another. And if the teleological order (as was always assumed 
 in the Platonic myths) is one in which justice prevails, this 
 does not involve any chimerical notion of guilt or merit on the 
 part of the individual towards the universe. All that is done 
 or suffered must be regarded as taking place naturally through 
 the actions and reactions of individuals within the smaller 
 or greater organic groups to which they belong. In the case 
 of man, the largest group may be, as Mill thought, sentient 
 life on earth; but with this each man's connexion is less 
 organic than with Humanity ; as again, at the present stage, 
 it is less organic with Humanity than with his own State.
 
 TELEOLOGY AND THE INDIVIDUAL 207 
 
 Lastly, the question put by Aristotle arises : whether the 
 unity of the whole is merely in the system, or is something 
 above. In terms of Spinozism : Is there any but a logical 
 distinction between natura naturans and natura naturata ? 
 Or, in terms of Hegelianism : Is there any meaning in talking 
 of Absolute Spirit apart from the finite spirits in which it is 
 manifested ? Now under the head of psychology we found 
 that, while determination by " final cause " continues to a 
 certain point, there is a point where, even within our experience, 
 we begin to go beyond it. Intellectual activity may attain a 
 kind of impersonal character in which the relation of end and 
 means begins to disappear ; and the mystics claim to go even 
 further. So far as transcendence of teleology is concerned, 
 the mystics and Aristotle who, it must be remembered, was 
 pre-eminently a teleologist quite agree. There may exist a 
 state or activity of the individual subject which does not reach 
 out to anything further, but is for that subject the end. If 
 something even better than this has an unchanging existence 
 in that which directs the whole, or contains all, or is all, then 
 there is placed for ever above volition what is finally the end 
 of all desire. All below this may contain an element of will ; 
 since even the lowest real existences are moved by a vague 
 " effort " towards some kind of good : but that which the 
 whole, or the highest in it, possesses, it does not need to strive 
 after. A position thus generalised seems to offer the elements 
 of a solution. There are systems of ends, and these are 
 mutually adapted so as to form one system ; but this system 
 has no end. There is no future of the universe for which its 
 present state is only a preparation; just as its present state 
 was not the " final cause " of the preceding. The perfection 
 of the whole exists eternally, in a manner of which the mystics 
 may get a glimpse. The whole, while it is a system, is more. 
 The One, which remains, is either superpersonal intellect, 
 containing all subjects, or something beyond intellect. Volition 
 and final cause belong only to the parts and to the flux. 
 
 From this it results that there is no evolution of the universe 
 as a whole. There always has been and always will be a 
 phenomenal world. The phenomenal world of science is, in 
 terms of idealism, a conceptual construction representing 
 for thought the groupings of appearances to thinking and 
 perceiving subjects. What is indicated by it is an aggregate 
 of systems analogous to our solar system, in all stages of 
 evolution and dissolution simultaneously. The cyclical pro-
 
 208 TELEOLOGY AND THE INDIVIDUAL 
 
 cesses of which we perceive the phases are those of particular 
 systems. In the whole, all orders of mental and physical 
 reality and appearance co-exist. Individual beings alternate 
 between actuality and possibility, whether of perceiving or of 
 arousing perception in others. The whole may be thought as 
 finite. That is to say, what we call the material systems are 
 numerable. They are in "infinite space," in the sense that 
 space as a subjective phantasm is necessarily infinite from the 
 nature of our experience ; but the ether in which they are 
 immersed has a measure. Possibilities of undergoing the 
 experience of perceptual motion are determinate in all direc- 
 tions. At a finite, though very great, distance from our place 
 in the universe, there is no longer the possibility of such 
 experiences as are constitutive of our physical world. 
 
 Time, being distinctively the form of the subject, is nearer 
 to metaphysical reality than space. It is also, for the imagina- 
 tion, more perplexing. Yet the puzzle regarding infinite past 
 time, insisted on especially by Renouvier, seems to be in the 
 end a puzzle for imagination rather than for thought. The 
 assertion that there is no limit to the series of phenomenal 
 events in the past can be cleared of self-contradiction ; and 
 both science and metaphysics seem to require it. The 
 phenomenal law of causal sequence does not allow us to stop 
 anywhere in tracing back one collocation to another by which 
 it was preceded. And, if we suppose a necessary relation 
 between the whole of reality, or the noumenon, and its 
 manifestation, it follows that there must always be phenomena, 
 without limit in the past as in the future. For thought there 
 is here no antinomy. The noumenon manifests itself now as 
 always ; and events in time are ever succeeding one another. 
 
 The laws of conservation of matter and energy are such as 
 would result from this metaphysical position. And, if the 
 transformation of energy so as to become unavailable, the 
 "dissipation of energy" as it is called, expresses the pre- 
 dominant movement under the given conditions of our solar 
 system, no ground has yet been shown for holding it to be 
 more than a provisional formula for a portion of a cycle. 
 " Entropy," or energy rendered unavailable, is not held by 
 physicists to be destroyed : therefore it must be conceived as 
 a reserve from which under other conditions the cycle may 
 renew itself. 
 
 This general outline seems at any rate to be scientifically 
 thinkable. The view set against it may be summed up in
 
 TELEOLOGY AND THE INDIVIDUAL 209 
 
 the assertion that phenomena are not necessarily, but con- 
 tingently, related to the noumenon. In short, the production 
 of the universe is to be conceived on the analogy of human 
 volition. This, undoubtedly, would get rid of the trouble for 
 the imagination, though at the expense of a miracle. A very 
 primitive form of imagination is a " mythus " or tale, which 
 starts with " once upon a time." It is an application of this 
 form of discourse when cosmogonic poets or theologians tell 
 of a beginning of the world. But, as we have partly seen, 
 thought leads away from this literally mythological view. A 
 miraculous beginning is imaginable and is defensible by pure 
 formal logic : but if we aim at a thoroughgoing scientific logic 
 also, where are we to stop in tracing back phenomenal effects 
 to causes ? And, when we deal with the question metaphysic- 
 ally, how can we be content to attribute that weakness of 
 human nature which displays itself as apparently arbitrary 
 choice, to the reality manifested in the whole system of things ? 
 In the human mind itself, at its higher stages, action or mental 
 process seems to flow by a kind of natural necessity. The 
 most plausible ground for indeterminism as regards the human 
 will is the seeming unreason of many (non-impulsive) actions, 
 whether viewed from within or from without. Of course they 
 are not really inconsistent with determinism : but, in viewing 
 the world as a whole, nothing even apparently like them is to 
 be observed. What physical science discovers is the immanent 
 reason of uniform law. To suppose this to have begun from a 
 point of time by an act of choice is to descend to a lower level 
 in seeking what purports to be a philosophical explanation of 
 the order revealed by science. 
 
 The view that there is no total process of the world from a 
 temporal beginning to an end, but that there always has been 
 and always will be a world, was held in antiquity by philo- 
 sophers who had systematically considered the question and 
 who had no mythological position to maintain. Between 
 naturalists and idealists there was here no difference. Earlier 
 than the systematic stage of philosophising, the position had 
 been explicitly stated by Heraclitus and by Parmenides. For 
 the elder thinker, no less than for his immediate successor and 
 opponent, the world was one perdurable whole, not made in 
 the past and not to be destroyed in the future. And, in 
 aphoristic or poetic form, this was connected with the idea of 
 a reality expressing itself in the system of the universe but 
 not exhausted by that system. 
 
 14
 
 210 TELEOLOGY AND THE INDIVIDUAL 
 
 Such " transcendence " of the universe by its reality, 
 according to the interpretation of Diels, was admitted even by 
 Heraclitus; though, in comparison with his doctrine of the 
 flux which is the never-ceasing form of all that appears, it 
 received slight expression. Parmenides was the first to lay 
 stress on the noumenon as such. For him, as for Heraclitus, 
 what appears is in flux. He did not deny change as an 
 empirical fact, but tried to give some account of it, not too 
 discordant with that of his predecessor. His Being, though 
 objective, is not the universe as it appears to perception, but 
 is the reality of the visible universe comprehending itself in 
 thought. It is true that he had not arrived at an " intellectual - 
 ist " theory of knowledge ; but the enumeration, in the second 
 part of the poem, of the differences and mixtures in the world, 
 is quite clearly intended to bring out the contrast of 
 phenomenon with reality. This distinction, as subjective 
 criticism arose, led very rapidly to a theory of knowledge more 
 appropriate for its support than the " sensationalist " psychology 
 of all the early thinkers. Thus the Neo-Platonic commentators, 
 as Diels says, if we allow for some shades of expression, did 
 not intrepret Parmenides unhistorically, but had a perfectly 
 correct view of his drift. And Greek thought, while moving 
 from the object to the subject, remained at one in its 
 cosmological assertions. The universe is the perpetual mani- 
 festation of Being or Reason, but the manifestation is through 
 unceasing change. 
 
 To the decisive assertion of Parmenides that the unity of 
 the world means more than unity of system, a parallel may 
 be found in the Indian philosophy of the Vedanta. Here, 
 however, Being (Brahman or Atman) is primarily, instead of 
 secondarily, subjective. The two philosophies have in 
 common, it must be allowed, the tendency to suppress what 
 they cannot deduce, to call it simply illusion. By later 
 thinkers a more balanced position was attained. Plotinus near 
 the end of ancient philosophy, and Spinoza not long after the 
 new beginning of philosophy in modern Europe, are at 
 bottom free from the "acosmism" sometimes attributed to 
 them. They recognise the variety as well as unity in the 
 world, the metaphysical individual as well as the one essence 
 of the whole. Yet, inheriting as they did a rationalist theory 
 of knowledge, they felt themselves bound to attempt the 
 deduction of what cannot wholly be deduced. The Many as 
 distinguished from the One, the grades of pluralised being from
 
 TELEOLOGY AND THE INDIVIDUAL 211 
 
 transcendent reality and unity downwards to bare possibility, 
 cannot be logically arrived at either by a theory of " emanation " 
 or of a " determination " which is " negation." The first, as is 
 now generally admitted, leads to an endless interpolating of 
 mean terms which can never bridge over the original chasm ; 
 and the second proceeds from something which for us at least 
 is negative to the details of our positive knowledge. And yet 
 the ontological movement in philosophy has not been a failure. 
 What is needed is correction in method, not abandonment of 
 the problem. 
 
 This is the lesson of the experiential philosophy. The 
 ontological problem still exists, and must be conceived as 
 largely as ever : but we must acknowledge that the parts of the 
 whole have to be taken as given. When known, their harmony 
 with the rest may become an object of imaginative thought : 
 but they have first to be brought into view as facts. Thus, 
 for example, teleology and individuality, however they may be 
 metaphysically explained, are facts of experience. A philo- 
 sopher may in his higher thought rise above the teleological 
 view, as Spinoza did ; but this view is not to be effaced. It 
 has indeed something that seems empirical and contingent, as 
 contrasted not only with the "amor Dei intellectualis " but 
 with a mathematical intuition of physical necessity. Between 
 the objects of these it presents itself as intermediate. It 
 determines the topics of mixed sciences. Sometimes it has 
 been sacrificed to the idealistic and sometimes to the 
 mechanical extreme, sometimes perhaps to both : yet, from its 
 appeal to the " common sense " type of mind, it is sure always 
 to return. The strength both of ancient and of modern 
 philosophies deriving from Plato and Aristotle is in having 
 retained the teleological point of view, conceived in a 
 scientific sense, within a highly speculative system, but not at 
 the summit. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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