Religion, in ancient Greece, had not to grapple with Science, as we now understand it, i.e. with the whole of positive knowledge acquired by humanity; but it encountered the philosophy, or rational interpretation, either of natural phenomena and life, or of men's traditional beliefs. Philosophy was born, in part, from Religion itself. The latter, in Greece, had not in its service an organized priesthood.
Consequently it did not express itself by hard and fast dogmas, lit only imposed rites—external acts— which entered into the life of the citizen. It was, moreover, rich in legends, in myths, which charmed the imagination, trained the mind, and stimulated thought. Where did these legends come from? Without doubt—it was believed—from forgotten revelations; but they were so copious, so different, so shifting, and, in many cases, so contradictory, childish, offensive and absurd, that it was impossible not to see in them the work of man as well as of divine revelation. To depart, in myths, from the primitive and the adventitious would have been a vain undertaking. Essentially an artist, moreover, the Greek was conscious—even when he spoke of the gods—of playing with his subject; and he scorned the proper meaning of the stories which he told. On the other hand, those gods who, according to tradition, had taught the ancients the rudiments of the traditional legends, were themselves fallible and limited: they knew but little more of these than men. So it came about that philosophy was developed very freely under the care and protection of the popular mythology itself.
She began, in the usual way, by disowning and striking her nurse. "It is," said Xenophanes, "men who have created the gods, for in these latter they find again their own shape, their feelings, their speech. If oxen knew how to depict, they would give to their gods the form of oxen. Homer and Hesiod have attributed to the gods all that, among men, is shameful and criminal." The stars, asserted Anaxagoras, were not divinities: they were incandescent masses, of the same nature as terrestrial stones. Some of the Sophists jested on the gods themselves. “It is not for me," said Protagoras, " to seek out either if the gods exist, or if they do not exist: many things hinder me from this, notably the obscurity of the subject and the shortness of human life."
So grew philosophy—critical, superior or indifferent in regard to religious beliefs, morally independent, and free even politically; for, if some philosophers were suppressed, that was only for details which appeared to contradict the public religion.
This development of philosophy was nothing but the development of human intelligence and reason; and thinkers were enamored of reason to this extent, that they aspired to make of it the principle of man and of the universe.
The task given to reason, thenceforth, was that of proving its reality and power, as against the blind necessity, the universal flux, the indifferent chance, which appeared the sole law of the world.
Inspiration, during this task, was found in the consideration of Art, where the thought of the artist is seen struggling with a heterogeneous matter, without which there could not be any realization. This matter—in its shape, its laws, its own tendencies—is indifferent or even impervious to the idea which one would make it express. The artist masters it, for all that: much more, he wins it over, and makes it appear supple and smiling in its borrowed form. It seems now that the marble aimed at representing Pallas or Apollo, and that the artist has only set free its properties.
Would not reason, in the face of Ananke, be in an analogous situation? According to Plato, according to Aristotle, Ananke—brute matter—is not thoroughly hostile to reason and to measure. The more we investigate the nature of reason and that of matter, the more we see them approximate, invoke one another, become reconciled. In what is apparently the most indeterminate matter, demonstrates Aristotle, there is already some form. Matter, at bottom, is only form in potency. Therefore, reason is, and is efficacious, since, without her, nothing that exists would continue as it is, but would go back to chaos. We moan over the brutality of fate, over the miseries and iniquities of life, and that is just; but disorder is only one aspect of things: he who looks at them with reason, finds again reason in them.
The Greek philosophers were bent on making more and more important, more and more powerful, that reason whose rd1e in nature they had thus discerned. And the more they exalted her, the more, in comparison with beings who partook of matter and nonentity, she appeared to merit surpassingly that title of Divine which popular religion had lavished at random. All nature hangs on reason, but all nature is powerless to equal it, said Aristotle; and, proving the existence of thought in itself—of the Perfect Reason, he called this Reason " God." If, then, reason turned aside from traditional religion, it was to establish, through knowledge of nature itself, a truer religion.
The god-reason was not, moreover, reasoning in the abstract. It was nature's master, the king who ruled all things. To it belonged properly the name of Zeus. "This entire universe which turns in the heavens," said Cleanthes the Stoic, in addressing Zeus," of itself goes whither thou leads it. Thy hand, which holds the thunderbolt, submits all things—the greatest as the least—to universal reason. Nothing, anywhere, is done without thee ; nothing, unless it be what the wicked do in their folly. But thou knowest how, from an odd number, to make an even number; thou renderest harmonious things that are discordant; beneath thy gaze, hate is turned into friendship. 0 God, who behind the clouds orderest the thunder, take men out of their baneful ignorance; disperse the mists that darken their minds, 0 father; and let them share in the intelligence by which thou rulest all things with justice, in order that we may render thee honor for honor, praising thy works without intermission, as it is fitting mortals should. For, unto mortals and gods alike, there is given no higher prerogative than that of praising eternally, in worthy speech, the Universal Law."
That was philosophical religion. Was it the irreconcilable enemy of popular religion? Was everything in those myths which Time had spared and consecrated only fantasy, disorder, and chaos according to its view? The multitude had deified the stars. But were not the stars, with the perfect regularity of their movements, direct manifestations of law, i.e. of reason, of God? The multitude worshipped Jupiter as king of gods and men. Did not this belief contain the sense of affinity which bound together all parts of the universe, making of them one single body subject to a common soul? Religion ordered respect for the laws, fidelity to duty, piety towards the dead; it lent to human feebleness the support of tutelary deities. Was it not, in that, the interpreter and helper of reason? Eeason, the true god, was not unapproachable by man ; he participated in it. Religion could, therefore, be at once human and worthy of reverence. It was the part of philosophy to penetrate the secret relations between traditional doctrines and universal reason, and to preserve, among these doctrines, all that contained some soul of truth.
Thus it was that philosophy became reconciled by degrees to religion. Already Plato and Aristotle had welcomed the traditional belief in the divinity of sky and stars, and, in a general way, had sought in myths some traces or rudiments of philosophical thought.
With the Stoics, reason—become, in a pantheistic sense, the part-mistress of the soul and the principle and end of all things—was, somehow, necessarily present in men's spontaneous and general beliefs, in everything that taught them to get away from their individual opinions and passions. Most certainly, myths, legends, religious ceremonies, in so far as they lowered the gods to the level of man or below man, deserved only contempt; but at the back of these tales, if one knew how to understand them, if from the literal sense one could disentangle the allegorical, there were truths. Zeus was the symbol of God binding all things together by his unity and his omnipresence; the secondary gods were types of those divine powers which were manifested in the multiplicity and diversity of the elements, of the earth's products, of great men, of the benefactors of humanity. It was the same Zeus who, according as one considered the aspect of his being, was by turns Hermes, Dionysus, Heracles. Heracles was power, Hermes divine knowledge. The worship of Heracles meant regard for effort, for intensity, for right judgment, and contempt of slackness and luxury. On this track the Stoics did not know how to stop, and the fancifulness of their allegorical interpretations exceeded all limit. It was that they had at heart the saving, to the largest extent possible, of popular beliefs and practices; deeming that, if reason was to operate not only on a select few, but on all men, it should be clothed in sundry forms, corresponding to the variety of intellects.
The last considerable manifestation of the philosophical spirit of the Greeks was Neo-Platonism, which, speculating on the essence of reason, thought to be exalted, by its doctrine of the Infinite One, above reason itself. But the more the Deity was made transcendent with regard to things, with regard to life and thought even, the more it was judged necessary to introduce, between the inferior and superior forms of being, a hierarchy of intermediary beings. This intermedium it was which constituted the field of popular religion. Its gods, nigh to our feebleness, helped to raise us towards the supreme God. And Plotinus, but especially his disciple Porphyry, justified by degrees, from the point of view of reason, all the elements of religion: myths, traditions, worship of images, divination, prayer, sacrifices, magic. Symbols intercalated between the sensible and the intelligible, all these things were good and partaking of truth, through the necessary part they played in the conversion of man towards the immaterial and the ineffable.
