We have particular reasons to throw a glance at "original" Greece and her "materialistic" philosophy. First, it will give us a chance to look at some interesting facts about that redoubtable "materialism" in a more general way.
Characteristically enough, at this period of Greek history we find little trace of actual dualism. The first leading philosophers of the country had a rather definitely monistic trend. The historian will remember in what direction the main interests of the "physiologues" of Ionia tended to go. Their principal preoccupation was not man. At least, a typical self-introspective activity for the purpose of analysing that man, was as far from their tendencies as anything could come. Truly and fully their gaze was turned outwards. The external world and its tangible physical properties were the object of their studies. So they have been qualified as "materialists" rather than as "idealists".
But one thing must be admitted by all: the Ionians had a tremendous efficiency in their proper field. They did not lose themselves in the maze of internal mysteries. Some historians seem to regret deeply the premature interruption of the period when the Ionians still had full freedom of action. Who can tell what formidable development the so-called true sciences might have experienced, even in those early and primitive centuries, if the great monists of Ionia had been permitted to carry on their realistic program of scientific investigation?
At least, it is certainly hard to tell which might have benefited the human race most. Today we are sometimes tempted to think that certain secrets of the physical world have been penetrated early enough as it is. From that view-point, it might be regarded as an actual blessing and a providential event that those Ionians were definitively stopped in their fairly successful activity.
Unquestionably a very different group of philosophers are soon destined to get the upper hand. We generally call them "idealists". To popular minds that sounds simply perfect. To the professional observer, however, their triumph means the triumph of dualism, nothing more and nothing less.
Of course, even those who would prefer a more popular form of idealism, and a more total form of spiritually (instead of just one-sided spiritualism), will freely admit that there may be evils in this world leading to its destruction more speedily than any spiritual deviation would ever seem able to do, for instance the impassible demon of irresponsible scientific invention. Religious men believe that even the God of heaven has occasionally seen Himself obliged to "come down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded," and to spread confusion among those purposeful and soberly machinating realists, lest nothing "be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do" (Genesis xi : 5, 6).
Of course "confusions", in themselves, are not so good either. We are here to study a particularly serious confusion, as the true monist would probably not hesitate to call it. Some have asked themselves with anxiety the searching question of whether man is really doomed to pendulate between extreme materialism and extreme spiritualism. Is there not a third alternative? If not, well, then one should not perhaps wonder at those who opt for spiritualism, after all, particularly in an age like ours. For today the world has certainly seen the ghastly results of pure materialism. We have seen what soberly reasoning intelligence, firmly fixed to the hard ground of practical realities, may do towards the wiping out of a world culture.
Such considerations would tend to make even the ardent lover of totality in human life fairly lenient and forgiving, even towards the most fancy-ridden idealism.
Probably, it will always remain a matter of subjective opinion, whether or not the amazing victory of idealistic dualism from Plato onwards should be considered as a blessing of providence. But that victory itself may be studied as a firm historical fact. And grouped around it we may find several equally indisputable historical facts. One of these concerns the fantastic talents with which some of the men were endowed who formed the vanguard of the idealist movement. Not only did they manage to lead influential personalities through all subsequent centuries into the lofty realms of their own speculations, but they also had quite an exceptional ability of gripping the minds of the multitudes.
But we want to emphasize one thing again in connection with that commonly accepted historical reality: as far as we can see, the average Greek was essentially different from those highly "sentimental" geniuses. We dare say the great masses of ancient Greeks had much more in common with those preceding "earth-centred" physiologues of Ionia. In fact, we find very little in them even remotely reminiscent of that heaven-bound flight implied in Platonic idealism. The Hellenes are pretty well known to have been comparatively well satisfied with life as it unfolded itself here, not looking with any eagerness to the future compensations of a hereafter. Sufficient evidence is the character of Hades, according to their mythology. To a Greek the essential thing was obviously this life and the tangible realities of this earth. A continuation of life on yonder distant shores of the hereafter was, indeed, enshrouded in shadows.
Only in the course of the second half of the fifth century does some sort of belief in a celestial immortality of the soul make its appearance on Greek territory. Isn't that, in itself, remarkable? And even after that time the concept of immortality is not too clearly associated with human destiny. With the Greeks, the word "immortal" is an epithet pertaining to the gods rather than to human beings. Their whole mythology is, in fact, based upon a certain principle of essential separation between the realms of the gods and the realms of men. An actual abyss seems to separate the world of the human from the world of the divine. At least that applies to the common hopes of common people. Only the great heroes had the privilege of escaping from the common lot of mortal beings, joining the abodes of the gods.
Erwin Rohde has this to say concerning that topic:
Only to a small number of individuals, marvellously endowed and privileged, did the creed ever attribute the oldest form of immortality which Greek thought has imagined; we mean the uninterrupted continuation, in some delicious hiding-place, of that psycho-physical life begun on this earth. The immortality of the human soul as such--in virtue of its own nature and its own constitution, and as a divine imperishable energy placed in a mortal body--was never the object of popular Greek beliefs.[1]
Louis Rougier, too, assures us that a total transformation had to take place in the popular conceptions of the nations in the Western Mediterranean area:
To the conception of the vital breath which dissipates with death, to the faith in the survival of vain shadows which repeat, in ineffective gestures, in the subterranean kingdom of the dead, the works of terrestrial existence, it [that is: the entirely new belief in a celestial immortality] substituted the idea of ??a soul of celestial essence, lost in this lower world like a land of exile, destined to return to its original homeland, to taste, in the company of the sidereal gods, a radiant immortality.[2]
Even Socrates does not seem to have been so sure at all about the form of survival, or even about survival itself, as is generally assumed. For example in the Apology you will look in vain for any cocksureness in this respect. Listen to Socrate's quite cautious formulation of his beliefs, or rather his hopes:
Let us reflect in another way, and we shall see that there is great reason to hope that death is a good; for one of two things--either death is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or, as men say [italics still ours], there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to another. Now if you suppose that there is no consciousness, but a sleep like the sleep of him who is undisturbed even by dreams, death will be an unspeakable gain. For if a person were to select the night in which his sleep was undisturbed even by dreams, and were to compare with this the other days and nights of his life, and then were to tell us how many days and nights he had passed in the course of his life better and more pleasantly than this one, I think that any man--I will not say a private man only, but even the great king--will not find many such days, or nights, when compared with the other. Now if death be of such a nature, I say that to die is gain, for eternity then is only a single night. But if death is the journey to another place, and there, as men say, all the dead abide, what good, O my friends and judges, can be greater than this? (Ap. 40)
Well, you may perhaps object, but in other dialogues there are numbers of passages where Socrates is quoted as expressing his belief in human immortality in terms of the firmest conviction.
In other dialogues yes. But there is considerable reason to believe that only the Apology gives us the most authentic picture of Socrates. Later on, in the Phaidon for instance, we know to what extent Plato has taken liberties in having Socrates express ideas on immortality which are first and foremost Platonic. In the Apology, however, he probably had a very definite plan of showing his readers Socrates as he really was. Precisely his devotion to that great master, it would seem, prevents him from adulterating here, in any serious way, the true traits of the man he describes. This is not so much a matter of philosophical argument. No, here it is rather the human heart of a respectful disciple that is moved to hand down to posterity a reliable image of the man whose last days had filled every friend with deep commotion.
This is also the view of Maurice Croiset (Prefatory notes to Plato's Apology in Oeuvres Completes, 1920, p. 171):
We have reason to believe that it [the Apology] faithfully expresses Socrates" feelings. Plato did not want to give him more certainty than he actually had.
Rohde actually regards the Apology as the one among Plato's dialogues in which he reveals himself in his fullest simplicity and his fullest greatness. And this author, too, pays particular attention to the fact that Plato here, characteristically enough, does not show a Socrates who insists upon the hope of eternal life as the only alternative. Another possibility is vividly portrayed: death may bring man into a state of total unconsciousness, like that of a dreamless sleep.
Socrates openly admits the two possibilities, relying on the justice of the gods who govern human affairs, and he does not push his investigations any further. How could he know with certainty what nobody knows?[3]
To tell the truth, the very words Plato now quotes Socrates as saying about that popularly assumed "kingdom of the souls", are liable to lead our thoughts towards the Hades of Homer rather than towards the bright home suggested by theologians, or by poets of the theologian mould.
Anyway, the popular Greek idea emerges clearly enough: The blessed privilege of immortality is not natural to any human person. It is a special favour, a merciful gift provided by divinity. As Alfred Loisy expresses it:
We are predestined, chosen by her (i.e., by divine force), and we receive the pledge from her in secret initiation ceremonies.[4]
That was just how the religions of mysteries offered immortality. It was actual translations that were supposed to take place. And the peculiar "catarisms" demanded for such translations indicate clearly enough that the soul is not generally assumed to go on living after the body has died. The hero does not enter into the state of divinity without a process of glorification, which has to take place right in the body! In other words: the real conception of the essence of human nature, here revealing itself, is a far cry from the profoundly dualist and spiritualist theories. Only through the introduction of Orphism and of Dionysian worship were these theories to make their way triumphantly into Greece.
From our point of view, the trend of the transformation here is very characteristic: the simple and the relaxed or the soundly peaceful have, by and by, been entirely replaced by the complicated and the excited. Super-tension and ecstasy characterize the rites of the new religions introduced from abroad. It is a question of "coming out of oneself" (exisasthai). That is, permitting the soul to be torn off from the body, thus finally "revealing its true nature". Only by means of such disruptive activity is the highest degree of "spiritual reality" supposed to be reached.
What about the "nationality" of that "sacred madness"? Was it genuinely Greek? And what about the origin of those veritable orgies which had to be arranged in order to bring about the queer sensation of the soul leaving its despicable bodily frame in order to join the glories of divinity? Were they genuinely Greek? Never. As a matter of fact, there continues, for a long time, to be a certain reaction against this in the Greek people. Precisely the Dionysos mysteries frequently passed the limit of what folks of common decency could tolerate.
We simply refuse to believe that this whole ecstatic religion was in any real harmony with the general spirit of the Greek mind. The Greeks were, after all, a matter-of-fact people, rejoicing in the simple beauties and the tangible goods of this earth. We do not deny that they could be extremely enthusiastic. As Eiliv Skard puts it, "The Greek took an almost fanatical interest in politics."[5] In fact, he would feel quite miserable if he were not allowed to live in his "polis". You certainly remember how definitely Socrates turns down the suggestion made by Crito of his fleeing from the prison and going into exile. Such an idea to him appears even more abominable than that of death. This strong "polis consciousness" may be taken as a sign of an intense fellowship feeling. It may also indicate an idealism in the popular sense of the term. For that political interest often resulted in a boundless and most admirable willingness to sacrifice oneself on the altar of the community.
However, we think we are perfectly justified in stating that, as a general rule, the Hellene is more inclined towards a certain bourgeois materialism than towards any super-idealism, whether you take the latter term in its popular or in its philosophical sense. Thus he is perhaps, in the last analysis, more adequately represented by those first "materialist" philosophers, whose monistic conceptions had led them to deny both the divinity of the stars and the immortality of the soul.
At least, we have nowhere found any generally Greek tendency to despise things simply because they are material and practical, or of sorting them out as a "strange element" unworthy of having company with the spiritual. We have shown Schiller's evaluation of Greek culture in general and of Greek poetry in particular. But in connection with the artistic field, a little, but perhaps very significant detail has attracted our attention: What was the Greek word for art? It was techne. But what is this "techne"? It is simply craftsmanship, the skill of making anything--from a pot to a poem. Art--we mean Art with a capital A--simply does not have any equivalent in the classical Greek language. Does that indicate any typical discrimination against the "lower" elements? On the contrary! At least, one cannot speak about any obvious trend towards spiritualistic dualism in this case.
But when and how, then, did that strange minority phenomenon of a radical Greek idealism enter upon the stage and start its triumphal procession?
Let us first mention the Pythagorean "spiritualists". These men had actually introduced the three points on which an immortality doctrine was likely to be based: 1) the dual nature of the world, 2) the divine nature of the stars, and 3) the close relationship between souls and stars.
Now it must immediately be admitted that the belief in a divine nature of celestial orbs is one which may be traced back as far as our records of the Greek people go. So the Pythagoreans had a comparatively easy job in persuading people that the human soul, as well, was destined to a higher lot than that shade-like existence provided by their original Hades. The revolutionary work of the really exceptional genius was prepared. We are still referring here to the fantastically influential "spiritualist" Plato.
However, we cannot immediately start discussing Plato's momentous dualism. There is first one serious question here from which there seems to be no escape. We have seen a certain tendency of moderation in the Greeks as a national group. Now we do believe that moderation, as a general rule, is a quality of considerable importance for the harmony and wholeness of a well-balanced life. This would speak definitely in favour of totality and true mental soundness in the Greek community. Sometimes, it is true, even moderateness can be carried too far. That may sound somewhat paradoxical. One thing is a fact: even in virtues the Greeks advocated a certain moderation. Perhaps just that "exaggerated fear of exaggerations"--of exaggeration in every and any field--may have prevented the Greeks from reaching what we here consider to be the highest culmination of totality.
We have adopted Spranger's standpoint, considering religiosity as the very highest of human cultural values. To us it also becomes the highest attainable peak of harmonious totality in human life. There should be no danger whatsoever of ever becoming "too religious". That is simply impossible!
In other words, there may, after all, be certain exceptions to the rule that "moderation favours totality". It should also be noted, however that when we here state the simple impossibility of ever becoming too religious, we are speaking about true religiosity. Religion has to do with spirituality, not with spiritualism. What is the difference? The difference is exactly the same as the one between totality and disruption. And to us that is no slight difference. The truly spiritual remains harmonious through its inherent virtue of integration. That implies also an integration of mind and matter, of eternal and temporal values. At least for human beings as we know them in this world, that is an absolutely inevitable implication. The fatal mistake of the spiritualist, however, consists just in splitting this totality up into "hostile parts", and of excluding one part as "base", "unworthy", or at best, "negligible".
What so easily deceives us in this spiritualism (or one-sided and dualistic type of idealism) is precisely its brilliant exterior. It perfectly eludes as a religion. Spiritualism has the visible appearance of true spirituality. Therefore its peculiar form of idealism very easily insinuates itself as a substitute for true religion. It becomes the religion of the "not too religious", as we shall sometimes paradoxically define it. We have seen the Greeks manifesting a rather moderate religiosity, from the beginning. Now, to some extent, even as a general group, they do permit themselves to be persuaded into that dualist type of idealism. But that does not necessarily mean that they are suddenly lifted onto a much higher spiritual level. Perhaps the very opposite. For, in the very concreteness and down-to-earth sober-mindedness of their original and more "materialistic" philosophy, there had been something fundamentally sound, a favourable basis for life in all its phases. With the new heaven-bound flight of the "pure spirits" there was a serious danger of losing that firm foundation without reaching the higher level which was supposed to be the destination.
However, we still refuse to believe that the Greeks--as a people--were in any way thoroughly affected by this soaring flight of the general Idea, loosed from its terrestrial bonds of the particular and the concrete. It was rather Plato, and a limited circle of exceptional men around him, who reached those dizzying heights. Therefore we are not able to quite agree with Axel Seeberg, if he really speaks about the Greeks as a national group, when he states:
The Hellene looks for a general connection and an absolute reality elevated above the spheres of this changing life, and still united with all its manifestations. He boldly postulates that the real world is static and unchangeable. And this particular feeling of a more universal reality beyond the visible one, becomes a characteristic of Greek culture through and through.[6]
One thing may be admitted of course: the abstracting and generalizing tendency, established by an exquisite minority, may by and by have grown so strong that it was finally bound to become, in some way, a particular trait of what historians have come to look upon as the ancient Greek culture. But then it must clearly be pointed out: this is the eventual result of a fabulous influence gradually exerted by the exceptional genius, in fact an influence so overwhelming that the original nature of the Hellene--as a type--has simply had the fate of being entirely swallowed up in the forceful tide of a relentlessly sweeping current. It was not at all the Greeks who had most of the "natural" characteristics Seeberg describes. It was Plato.
The same author admits a certain sense of the concrete, rather than the abstract, in the way Greeks tended to consider history. To them history is action. The more impersonal factors, such as economic laws, conditions of nature, etc., were outside the realm of their comprehension, or at least outside the realm of what they had a desire to comprehend. Something similar applies to Greek poetry. The living action and the concrete, personal, human agent are constantly found to be in the centre.[7] Is not that a curious quality to emphasize in the Greek character, if at the same time one persists in qualifying Platonic abstractions as a typically Greek phenomenon?
James Barr seems to take his point of departure in a stereotype, entirely different from this, and assumed to be just as characteristic of current public opinion: "The highest philosophical developments of the Greeks were interested in an immutable reality, paying no attention whatsoever to action in history"! (Barr, Semantics of Biblical Language, 1962, p. 11)
The "highest philosophical developments" to be sure! But what about the fundamentally Greek conceptions then? We mean those not quite so high, but more popularly representative.
We sincerely believe that both statements--apparently so contradictory--may be correct enough. One should only be careful to distinguish between an original Greek conception and an eventual conception--the Platonic one.
We do not deny that the Greek people had an immediate and intense desire to communicate, to explain things and find reasons, to investigate and describe. But to just what point did it seem natural for them to carry such investigations? We would say that a certain mediocrity, which is not at all Platonic, asserts itself here as well: just the concrete facts of their own beloved little world are the favourite objects of their common eagerness to find laws and rules. Little wonder that they turn so immediately towards nature. In fact, even phenomena considered to be "more spiritual", such as history, actually become a piece of nature to them.
Just in the Greek attitude towards history, however, we feel a striking lack. We are thinking of a definitely spiritual element which to us seems indispensable as a guarantee of true totality. Later on we shall describe that in more detail under the title of "meaningfulness" in human life. We shall try to show, in fact, that human totality can never live without human finality.
But what is the Greek's concern about a human end, a meaningful goal, particularly an end in history? How much of unique significance is he able to get sight of in the turbulent drama of historical happening? The Norwegian specialist in Greek culture, Eiliv Skard, expresses the attitude of the Greeks as historians in the following terms:
Human history is in reality nothing but another piece of nature. History is a law-directed natural process, as everything repeats and renews itself, like autumn and spring, life and death. The Greek endeavoured to find laws and rules in this game--naturally enough, by the way, for he had a real passion for laws and systems. However, the development toward a goal in history, that was an idea entirely foreign to most Greeks.[8]
Now it would probably be very wrong to imply that the Greeks have no sense of finality at all, no attitude of meaningfulness in human life. We are soon to see that in antiquity--considered as a section of the history of man's spiritual life--even philosophy still has a fairly admirable degree of such finality, especially if we compare it to modern times. However, if one compares the Greeks to the Jews for instance, as Professor Skard does, one thing becomes very conspicuous once more: their relative mediocrity in a religious respect. And theologians are well agreed upon this point.
For the Jew it is an imperative demand that history should have a goal. His conception of life is simply that of his religion. It coincides entirely with Yaweh's revelation. Everything there leads him immediately to the great conviction that history keeps rising towards a definite objective a glorious end. That is what we have described as the elan vital of alterocentricity. In both the Old and the New Testament this constitutes the very spirit of eschatology. It is God revealing Himself. And the locus of His revelation is nothing but history. Through it He realizes the kingdom of His justice. Thus everything is filled to the brim with meaning. This is the supreme finality, the meaningfulness of the eschaton.
History in Greek civilization is something widely different, something infinitely more trivial, if we may express what we mean frankly. It is, in so far as history, with the Greeks, avers itself as strangely akin to anecdote. It also possesses another kinship: It is narrowly related to tragedy.
Historians today may say about the Greek historian that he saw nothing higher in the historical processes than Fate or Necessity.
We have tried to express the same thing applying our concept of "Automatism". The true reason why the Greeks, and every subsequent civilization of the Western World, permitted themselves to be charmed by a system as little charming in itself (from a soundly human point of view) as that of inexorable total automatism, was the unfortunate circumstance of an original emptiness which we can hardly express by a more adequate term than paganism. For that term evokes its utter unrelatedness to both Judaism and Christianity. That automatism, or spiritual vacuum, elevated, by the highest pagan cultures in humanity, to the dignity of a sham-religion, here termed spiritualism, was the highest heritage the Hellenist heathen could legate to subsequent generations of Western culture-bearers. The most immediate literary translation of this aimlessness is Tragedy.
Characteristically enough, tragedy in this sense is unknown to the Jews. Why? Because Tragedy simply signifies the absence of meaningfulness. Anecdote, too, is unknown to the Jews. Why? Because Anecdote simply signifies triviality. And that, too, is synonymous with the absence of meaning in life only with a somewhat different shade:
Triviality is the absence of deeper meaning on an everyday level. Tragedy is meaninglessness elevated by drama to the level of an ultimate end, a paganized eschaton, one might perhaps say.
Small wonder then that the Greeks, in search of their ultimate reality, tended to turn away from history, in favour of the unchangeable. We must explain that as an entirely natural resignation. The person who does not find in history anything profoundly human, nay more than that: profoundly religious, profoundly salvatory and full of meaning--takes his refuge precisely in the static, in the absolute zero, as the highest point. One is then happy not to have been reduced to a directly negative value. Tragedy is precisely that definitely negative value. The dissolution of all personal consciousness--thanks to the ingenious trick of the Idea (which, in Platonic spiritualism, renders exactly the same service, in this respect, as the Buddhist Nirvana)--saves man from his consciousness of himself; that is, the consciousness of a desperate condition. Such is the inevitable price paid for self-sufficiency, for self-redemption.
Seen from this view-point the difference between the Greek's attitude towards history and the Hebrew's attitude becomes easy to understand. To the Greek, history is an evil from which he should be saved. To the Hebrew it is the very locus of his salvation.
By the way, how could one ever expect an idea of finality of the concrete Hebraic type in the realms of Greek philosophy? Philosophers never had anything corresponding, even remotely, to the graphicalness of biblical revelation. Nothing but Christianity ever reached that full measure of true meaning, a meaning giving back to man his true totality. In fact, what was Christianity's unique conception of the "civitas Dei"? Simply a purposeful march along the road of history all the way up to the kingdom of God. With that conception, the Christian Gospel makes possible a spirituality that is identical with totality in human life. And outside that there is no cultural heritage worth mentioning in any civilization. It is this totality inherent in Christianity which no other spiritual efflorescence has ever known. Whatever crumbs they have managed to gather of it, they owe to Christianity.
Skard claims, and rightly so, that even the modern cultural optimism of such typical non-Christians as the Marxist historians are indebted to the Christian heritage of our culture for an incredible part of their much-lauded values, whether they know it or not.[9]
But the great question is whether there is so much to laud in it. The modern Occidental suffers from a lack of finality in his views on history which is really agonizing. And to whom does he owe that part of his heritage?
We distinguished in Greek history between the anecdote and the tragic attitude. Now the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber has an interesting distinction in his portrayal of modern man and that man's conception of history (Werke, Der Mensch von heute und die judische Bibel, II 854-855):
1. It is either "libertinistisch"; that is, he accepts, and connives in, its pseudofinality ("Scheinsinn"), a tumultuous promiscuity of processes: the rise and decline of nations, greedy triumphs and miserable defeats.
2. Or he adopts a "dogmatic" attitude toward history, fixating its rigid laws and calculating in advance its future courses, at though its "great lines" were engraved on a rolling wheel just rolling down; history is nothing but a stale, rigid emptiness--"ein vorhandener Raum".
Double mistake! Human destiny is neither accidental episode nor ineluctable fate. Where origin and goal are humanly realized facts, there is no such aimlessness.
One is carried by a meaning that one could not conceive; but one receives it not in order to formulate it, but in order to live it; and it is lived in the fruitful and glorious fullness of decision of the moment, which in its realities is everywhere a biographical one, yours and mine no less than Alexander's and Caesar"s; but yours as the moment of your encounter.
But modern man knows no encounter, no beginning. To him history is like a splash of water reaching him from a cosmos devoid of all history. Nor does he know any end. And why are both these realities unknown to him? For the simple reason that he insists on not knowing what lies between them, the present moment to which he would then be obligated to commit himself. But that would mean assuming a personal responsibility for decisions at this moment. Modern man feigns to be fond of risks, but the only risk really worth while, that of personal responsibility, is one he carefully avoids. In other words, he should keep quiet about the "absurdities" he pretends to find in history. They are his deliberate choice. So how could he expect to come across any meaningfulness?
We would not say, however, that this actual preference for non-sense rather than sense, found in modern Occidentals, is an immediate heritage from ancient Greece. That would be too hard an indictment.
The culture of Greece was at a sad disadvantage in that it was simply deprived of every possibility of any strong "infiltration" on the part of Jewish or Christian influences. It was outside the blessed sphere of totality (in terms of divine Spirit becoming human flesh), both in historical timing and geographical space. It was doomed to be pagan, downright arch-pagan. In other words, its sense of true human wholeness and harmony was also doomed to remain in a precarious shape. One should only admit that precariousness.
But to make specific nature and mental disposition of the Greek nation--en bloc, as it were--responsible for that extreme disruption we find in Platonic idealism, this we must disavow as a serious injustice, indeed. If one insists on venturing upon formulating certain theses on "fundamental Greek character traits", we dare say one ought rather to seek inspiration in the profoundly reasonable conclusions drawn by Schiller. For certainly Schiller does give us a strikingly plausible image of the truly "average Greek". And that is by no means the image of any sentimental super-tension. It is not at all that proud titanism cutting all human values into tiny morsels. On the contrary, the portrait is that of a Greek, fairly respectful towards an integrated humanity:
It is humanity alone in which the Greek encompasses all beauty and perfection. Sensuality may never appear to him without a soul; and his humane feeling finds it equally impossible to separate raw animality and intelligence. Just as he strives to give every idea a body and also to embody the spiritual, so he demands from every instinctive act in man an immediate expression of his moral destiny.[10]
Now, frankly, what does this generous versatility, or many-sidedness, of general Greek humanity have in common with Platonic spiritualism? We dare say, practically nothing. Spiritualism is precisely one-sided. And it is anything but generously human. What is truly versatile and heartily human is a spirituality of an entirely different type. True spirituality demands wholeness and heartiness. That is not the spiritualism of Plato, but the spirituality of Jesus Christ. These two were destined to stand as symbols for an inexorable rivalry for the future of all Occidental culture. Which of the two was to win the race?
In the present chapter we have only arrived at the dawn of that culture. We are speaking about original Hellenism; that is the average character of a people lifting the Western World onto the stage of a world culture. This people had not met Jesus Christ. It had not met Plato either. And this latter fact is the one we should first try to fix in our minds. Plato is not a self-evident feature of original Greek character. It is falsely that one has been so quick to formulate some sort of anticipating conclusion (consciously or unconsciously): "Greece is Plato".
By the way, this erroneous assumption may be traced back to a current one of a more general order. One constantly imagines that by knowing the salient characteristics of a country's most famous men one may also know the predominant characteristics of that country itself. This is an understandable misunderstanding but also a most serious one. Personally, in that respect, we would rather lean towards the viewpoint of an American historian who has made this little, but most noteworthy remark (in the Preface to the English works of George Herbert, 1905, p. xii).
The tendencies of an age appear more distinctively in its writers of inferior rank than in those of commanding genius.[11]
We might perhaps elaborate on this terse statement of a general rule by adding that the writers of inferior rank tell us most about the actual conditions in their respective times, and within their respective territories. The writers of commanding genius tell us more about conditions in following times (perhaps during centuries and millennia after their deaths), and covering a vastly extended territory (perhaps comprising the entire world).
In other words, if you just want the sober facts of here and now, turn to the "writers of inferior rank". If you want a sort of visionary panorama of things to come, turn to the "prophet", the man of "commanding genius". He is far ahead of his time. The image that his work and his personal character traits may convey to you, represents a rather curious extension both in space and time. In fact, his genius has been of such "command" that it has finished by moulding any present dimensions according to his own image.
So we, do see what we should expect to find in Plato. We also see what we should not expect to find in him.
We see what we may expect to find is the spirit of a prolonged Hellenism, the spirit of present-day Europe. And that is certainly not a spirit of human totality, not even the relative totality of the ancient Greeks.
Notes: