The Roman Poets of the Republic Part 40

[Footnote 69: v. 233-4.]

[Footnote 70: ii. 931, etc.]

[Footnote 71: v. 1233-5.]

CHAPTER XIII.

THE RELIGIOUS ATt.i.tUDE AND MORAL TEACHING OF LUCRETIUS.

Lucretius does not enforce his moral teaching on the systematic plan on which his physical philosophy is discussed. His view of human life is sometimes presented as it arises in the regular course of the argument, at other times in highly finished digressions, interspersed throughout the work with the view apparently of breaking its severe monotony. These pa.s.sages might be compared to the lyrical odes in a Greek drama. They afford relief to the strained attention, and suggest the close and permanent human interest involved in what is apparently special, abstract, and remote. There is no necessary connexion between the atomic theory of philosophy, and that view of the end and objects of life which Lucretius derived from Epicurus. Although the moral att.i.tude of Epicurus was, in some respects, antic.i.p.ated by Democritus, Epicureanism really started from independent sources, viz. from the later development of the ethical teaching of Socrates, and from the personal circ.u.mstances and disposition of Epicurus. By the ordinary Epicurean his philosophy was valued chiefly as affording a basis for the denial of the doctrines of Divine Providence and of the immortality of the soul. But there is a wide difference between ordinary Epicureanism and that solemn view of human life which was revealed to the world in the poem of Lucretius. The power which his speculative philosophy exercised over his mind was one cause of this difference. Although there is no necessary connexion between his philosophical convictions and his ethical doctrines, yet the elevation of feeling which he has imparted to the least elevated of all the moral systems of antiquity may be in part accounted for by the influence of ideas derived from the philosophy of Democritus.

Epicureanism, in its original form, was the expression of a character as unlike as possible to that of Lucretius. It arose in a state of society and under circ.u.mstances widely different from the social and political condition of the last phase of the Roman Republic. It was a doctrine suited to the easy social life which succeeded to the great political career, the energetic ambition, and the creative genius which enn.o.bled the great age of Athenian liberty. It was essentially the philosophy of the [Greek: rheia zoontes], who found in refined and regulated pleasure, in friendliness and sociability, a compensation for the loss of political existence, and of the sacred a.s.sociations and ideal glories of their ancestral religion. Human life, stripped of its solemn meaning and high practical interest, was supposed to be understood and realised, and brought under the control of a comfortable and intelligible philosophy. Pleasure was the obvious end of existence; the highest aim of knowledge was to ascertain the conditions under which most enjoyment could be secured; the triumph of the will was to conform to these conditions. All violent emotion, all care and anxiety, whatever impaired the capacity of enjoyment or fostered artificial desire, was to be controlled or resisted, as inimical to the tranquillity of the soul. The philosophers of the garden taught and acted on the practical truth, that pleasure depended on the mind more than on external things; that a simple life tended more to happiness than luxury[1]; that excess of every kind was followed by reaction. They inculcated political quiescence as well as the abnegation of personal ambition. As death was 'the end of all,'

life was to be temperately enjoyed while it lasted, and resigned when necessary, with cheerful composure.

Such a philosophy would scarcely be thought capable of having given birth to any form of serious and elevated poetry. Its natural fruit was the refined, cheerful, and witty new comedy of Athens. Yet the genius of Lucretius and of Horace expressed these doctrines in tones of dignity and beauty, which have been denied to more enn.o.bling truths. The philosophy of pleasure thus makes its appeal to the poetical susceptibility, as well as to the ordinary temperament of men. It might have been thought also that no philosophy would have been less attractive to the dignity of the n.o.bler type, or to the coa.r.s.er texture of the common type of Roman character. Yet among the Romans of the last age of the Republic, Epicureanism was a formidable rival to the more congenial system of Stoicism, and was professed by men of pure character and intellectual tastes as well as by men like the Piso Caesoninus, of whom both Cicero and Catullus have left so unflattering a portrait. These two systems, although antagonistic in their view and aim, yet had this common adaptation to the Roman character, that they held out a definite plan of life, and laid down precepts by which that life might be attained. The strength of will and singleness of aim, characteristic of the Romans, their love of rule and impatience of speculative suspense, inclined and enabled them to embrace the teaching of those schools whose tenets were most definite and most readily applicable to human conduct. To a Greek philosopher the interest of conforming his life to any system arose in a great measure from the freedom and exercise thereby afforded to his intellect. Thus Epicurus, in denying the power of luxury to give happiness, says,--'These are not the things which form the life of pleasure,'--'[Greek: alla nephon logismos kai tas aitias exereunon pases haireseos kai phyges, kai tas doxas exelaunon, aph' hon pleistos tas psychas katalambanei thorybos][2].' To a Roman, on the other hand, such a scheme of life was recommended by the new power which was thus imparted to the will. Greek philosophy has sometimes been reproached as the cause of the corruption of Roman character and the decay of Roman religion. But it would be more true to say that, to the higher natures at least, philosophy supplied the place of the ancient principles of duty, which had long since decayed with the decay of patriotism and religion. The idea of regulating life by an ideal standard afforded a broader aim and a more humane and liberal sphere of action to that self-control and constancy of will, out of which, in combination with absolute devotion to the State, the ancient Roman virtue had been formed. But still it is true that the principles of Epicureanism were difficult to reconcile with some of the conditions, both good and bad, of Roman character. While fostering the humaner feelings and more social tastes, and so softening the primitive rudeness and austerity, these doctrines tended to discourage national and political spirit, by withdrawing the energies of the will from outward activity to the regulation of the inner life. The att.i.tude both of Stoicism and Epicureanism was one of resistance on the part of the will to outward influences;--the one system striving to attain entire independence of circ.u.mstances, the other to regulate life in accordance with them, so as to secure the utmost positive enjoyment, and the utmost exemption from pain. The political pa.s.sions of the last age of the Republic inclined men of thought and leisure to that philosophy which seemed best fitted to meet and satisfy--

'The longing for confirmed tranquillity Inward and outward.'

But while Epicureanism was a natural refuge from the pa.s.sions of a revolutionary era, Stoicism was a fortress of inward strength to the few who, at the fall of the Republic, resisted the manifest tendency of things, and, in a later age, to those who strove to maintain the dignity of Roman citizens under the degradation of the early Empire.

But the profession of Epicureanism, in the last age of the Republic, was not confined to men like Atticus and Lucretius who stood aloof from public life. The existence of Ca.s.sius, who acted and suffered for the same cause as the Stoic Cato, shows that political apathy, although theoretically required by this philosophy, was not essential to a Roman Epicurean. Lucretius, though animated by an ardent spirit of proselytism, does not desire that Memmius should forget his duties as a citizen and statesman. The denial of the Divine interference in human affairs and of the doctrine of a future state was the essential bond of agreement among the adherents of Epicureanism. The religious unsettlement of the age a.s.sumed in them a positive form. They were the Sadducees of Rome, who escaped from the perplexity as well as from the most elevating influences of life, by moulding their feelings and conduct on the firm conviction, that while man was master of his happiness in this world, he had nothing either to hope or fear after death.

It seems a strange result of the moral confusion of that time to find the enthusiasm of Lucretius springing from this denial of what from the days of Plato have been regarded as the highest hopes of mankind.

No writer of antiquity was more profoundly impressed by the serious import and mystery of life. Yet he appears as the unhesitating advocate of all the tenets of this philosophy, and denies the foundations of religious belief with a zeal more like religious earnestness than the spirit of any other writer of antiquity. Without conscious deviation from the teaching of his master, he reproduces the calm unimpa.s.sioned doctrines of Epicurus, in a new type,--earnest, austere, and enn.o.bled; enforcing them not for the sake of ease or for the love of pleasure, but in the cause of truth and human dignity.

Pleasure is indeed recognised by him as the universal law or condition of existence--'dux vitae dia voluptas,'--the great instrument of Nature through which all life is created and maintained. But the real object of his teaching is to obtain not active pleasure, but peace and a 'pure heart.' 'For life,' he says, 'may go on without corn or wine, but not without a pure heart--

At bene non poterat sine puro pectore vivi.

All that Nature craves is that the body should be free from actual pain, and that the mind, undisturbed by fear and anxiety, should be open to the influence of natural enjoyment--'

Nonne videre Nil aliud sibi naturam latrare, nisi ut, cui Corpore seiunctus dolor absit, mente fruatur Iucundo sensu cura semotu' metuque[3]?

Although in different places he indicates a genuine appreciation of the charms of art,--in the form of music, paintings, statues, etc.,--yet he expresses or implies an independence of all the advent.i.tious stimulants to enjoyment. The only needful pleasure is that which Nature herself bestows on a mind free from care, pa.s.sion, violent emotion, restless discontent, and slothful apathy.

Although no new principle or maxim of conduct appears in his teaching, the view of human life presented by Lucretius was really something new in the world. A strong and deep flood of serious thought and feeling was for the first time poured into the shallow channel of Epicureanism. The spirit in which Lucretius contemplated the world was different from that of any other man of antiquity; especially different from that of his master in philosophy. To the one human life was a pleasant sojourn, which should be temperately enjoyed and gracefully terminated at the appointed time: to the other it was the more sombre and tragic side of the august spectacle which all Nature presents to the contemplative mind. Moderation in enjoyment was the practical lesson of the one: fort.i.tude and renunciation were the demands which the other made of all who would live worthily.

This difference in the spirit, rather than the letter, of their philosophy is to be attributed in some degree to this, that Lucretius was a Roman of the antique type of Ennius, born with the pa.s.sionate heart of a poet, and inheriting the resolute endurance of the great patrician families. Partly too, as was said before, the effect of the speculative philosophy which he embraced was to deepen and strengthen that mood of imaginative contemplation, which he shares, not with any of his countrymen, but with a few great thinkers of the world. It is his philosophical enthusiasm which distinguishes the teaching of Lucretius from the meditative and practical wisdom which has made Horace the favourite Epicurean teacher and companion of modern times.

Partly too, as was said in a former chapter, this new aspect of Epicureanism in Lucretius may be attributed to the reaction of his nature from the confusion of the times in which he lived.

It is not indeed possible to learn whether the pa.s.sions of his age first drove him to Epicureanism, or whether the doctrines of that philosophy, adopted on speculative grounds, may not rather have led him to regard his age in the spirit of contemplative isolation, which he has described in the well-known pa.s.sage--

Suave, mari magno turbantibus aequora ventis, etc.

His philosophy may have been forced on him by personal experience, or the intimations of experience may have a.s.sumed their form and colour from the nature of his philosophy. But the memories of his youth and the experience of things witnessed in his manhood did undoubtedly colour all his thoughts and feelings on human life. Some of the forms of evil against which he contends had never been so prominently displayed before. Yet all these considerations afford only a partial explanation of the character of his practical philosophy. There were other Roman Epicureans, contemporary with him and later, and none are known to have been in any way like him. Although his nature was made of the strong Roman fibre; although his mind had been deeply imbued with the spirit of Greek philosophy; although his view of life was necessarily coloured by the action of his times; yet all these considerations go but a little way to explain his att.i.tude of mind and the work which he accomplished in the world. Over all these considerations this predominates, that he was a man of great original and individual force, and one who in power and sincerity of thought and feeling rose higher than any other above the level of his age and country.

The moral teaching of the poem was rather an active protest against various forms of evil than the proclamation of a positive good. The happiness which the philosophic life promised is described in vague outline, like the delineation given of the calm and pa.s.sionless existence of the G.o.ds. Epicureanism appears here in antagonism to the prejudice and ignorance, the weakness and the pa.s.sions of human nature, rather than in its hold of any positive good. Hence it is that the tones of Lucretius might in many places be mistaken for those of a Stoic rather than an Epicurean. In their resistance to the common forms of evil these systems were at one. Perhaps, too, in the positive good at which he aimed, the spirit of Lucretius was more that of a Stoic than he imagined. His sense of human dignity was much more powerful than his regard for human enjoyment. Yet his philosophy enabled him, along with the strength of Stoicism, to cherish humaner sympathies. While his earnest temper, his scorn of weakness, his superiority to pleasure were in harmony with the militant rather than the quiescent att.i.tude of each of these philosophies, his humanity and tenderness of feeling and the enjoyment which he derived from Nature and art were more in harmony with the better side of Epicureanism than with the formal teaching of the Porch.

The evils of life, for the cure of which Lucretius considers his philosophy available, appeared to him to spring not out of man's relation to Nature, but out of the weakness of his reason and the corruption of his heart. The great service of Epicurus consisted not only in revealing the laws of Nature, but in laying his finger on the secret cause of man's unhappiness. Observing the insufficiency of all external goods to bestow peace and contentment, he saw that the evil lay in the vessel into which these blessings were poured:--

Intellegit ibi vitium vas efficere ipsum Omniaque illius vitio corrumpier intus, Quae conlata foris et commoda c.u.mque venirent; Partim quod fluxum pertusumque esse videbat, Ut nulla posset ratione explerier umquam; Partim quod taetro quasi conspurcare sapore Omnia cernebat, quaec.u.mque receperat, intus[4].

The evils which vitiate our happiness are the cowardice which dares not accept the blessings of life, the weakness which repines at what is inevitable, the restless desires which cannot enjoy the present and crave for what is beyond their reach, the apathy and insensibility to natural enjoyment, which are the necessary consequence of luxurious indulgence. Thus the aim of his moral teaching was to purify the heart from superst.i.tion, from the fear of death, from the pa.s.sions of ambition and of love, from all artificial pleasures and desires.

The greatest of these evils and the mainspring of all human misery is superst.i.tion. It is this which surrounds life with the gloom of death--

Omnia suffundens mortis nigrore[5].

Against the arbitrary and cruel power, supposed to be exercised by the G.o.ds, Lucretius proclaimed internecine war. The fear of this power is denounced, not as a restraint on natural inclination, but as a base and intolerable burden, degrading life, confounding all genuine feeling, corrupting our ideas of what is holiest and most divine. The pathetic story of the sacrifice of Iphigenia is told to enforce the antagonism between the exactions of religious belief and the most sacred human affections. Every line of the poem is indirectly a protest against the religious errors of antiquity. At occasional intervals this protest is directly uttered, sometimes with indignant irony, at other times with the profoundest pathos. The first feeling breaks forth in the pa.s.sage at vi. 380, etc., where he argues against the fancies which attribute thunder to the capricious anger of the G.o.ds. 'Why is it,' he asks, 'that the bolts pa.s.s over the guilty and often strike the innocent? Why are they idly spent on desert places?

Is this done by the G.o.ds merely in the way of practice and exercise for their arms? Why is it that Jupiter never hurls his bolts in a clear sky? Does he descend into the clouds in order that his aim may be surer? Why does he cast his bolts into the sea? What charge has he against the waves and the waste of waters?

Quid undas Arguit et liquidam molem camposque natantis[6]?

Why is it that he often destroys and disfigures his own temples and images?'

Elsewhere, however, he is moved by a feeling deeper than scorn,--a feeling of true reverence, springing from a high ideal of the att.i.tude which it became man to maintain in presence of a superior nature.

There is no pa.s.sage in the poem in which he speaks more from the depths of his heart than in the lines--

O genus infelix humanum, talia divis c.u.m tribuit facta atque iras adiunxit acerbas!

Quantos tum gemitus ipsi sibi, quantaque n.o.bis Volnera, quas lacrimas peperere minoribu' nostris!

Nec pietas ullast velatum saepe videri Vertier ad lapidem atque omnis accedere ad aras Nec proc.u.mbere humi prostratum et pandere palmas Ante deum delubra nec aras sanguine multo Spargere quadrupedum nec votis nectere vota, Sed mage pacata posse omnia mente tueri[7].

The terrors of the popular mythology are denounced as a violation of the majesty of the G.o.ds, as well as the cause of infinite evil to ourselves,--not indeed because any thought or act of ours has the power to rouse the Divine anger, but from the effect that these feelings have on our own minds. 'No longer can we approach the temples of the G.o.ds with a quiet heart, nor receive into our minds the intimations of the Divine nature in peace'--

Nec delubra deum placido c.u.m pectore adibis, Nec de corpore quae sancto simulacra feruntur In mentes hominum divinae nuntia formae Suscipere haec animi tranquilla pace valebis[8].

This pa.s.sage and others in the poem imply that Lucretius both believed in the existence of G.o.ds, and conceived of them as revealing themselves through direct impressions to the mind of man, and filling it with solemn awe and peace. But the account which he gives of their eternal existence is vague and poetical, and might almost be regarded as a symbolical expression of what seemed to him most holy and divine in man. The highest aim of man is to 'lead a life worthy of the G.o.ds': the essential attribute of the divine life is 'peace.' The G.o.ds are said to consist of the finest and purest essence, to be exempt from death, decay, and wasting pa.s.sions, to be supplied with all things by the liberal bounty of Nature, and to dwell for ever in untroubled serenity above the darkness and the storms of our world. Their abode in the s.p.a.ces betwixt different worlds--(the 'intermundia' as they are called by Cicero),--is described in words almost literally translated from the description of the Heaven of the Odyssey--

Apparet divum numen sedesque quietae Quas neque concutiunt venti nec nubila nimbis Aspergunt neque nix acri concreta pruina Cana cadens violat semperque innubilus aether Integit, et large diffuso lumine rident[9].

They reveal themselves to man in dreams and waking visions by images of ampler size and more august aspect than that of our mortal condition. Fear and ignorance have a.s.signed to these unchanging forms the functions of creating and governing the world, and out of this fear have arisen all over the earth temples and altars, along with the festivals and the solemn rites of superst.i.tion. But the G.o.ds are neither the arbitrary tyrants nor the beneficent guardians of the world. Why should they have done anything for the benefit of man?

How can he add to or detract from their eternal happiness? Shall we suppose them weary of their existence, and infected with a human pa.s.sion for change?--

At, credo, in tenebris vita ac maerore iacebat, Donec diluxit rerum genitalis origo.

Whence could they have obtained the idea of creation, whence gathered the secret powers of matter--

Si non ipsa dedit specimen natura creandi?

Against the old argument from final causes he opposes that drawn from the imperfections of the world, such as the waste of Nature's resources on vast tracts of mountain and forest, on desolate marshes, rocks, and seas,--the enmity to man of other occupants of the earth,--the malign influences of climate and the seasons,--the feebleness of infancy,--the devastations of disease,--the untimeliness of early death[10].

While his belief in the G.o.ds is thus expressed in vague outline and poetical symbolism, yet it is clear that as he recognised a secret, orderly, and omnipotent power in Nature, so also he recognised the ideal of a purer and serener life than that of earthly existence.

These two elements in all true religion, a reverential acknowledgment of a universal power and order, and a sense of a diviner life with which man may have communion, were part of the being of Lucretius. His denial of supernatural beliefs extended not only to all the fables and false conceptions of ancient mythology, but to the doctrine of a Divine Providence recompensing men, here or hereafter, according to their actions. The intensity of his nature led him to identify all religion with the cruel or childish fables of the popular faith. The certainty with which he grasped the truth of the laws and order of Nature was incompatible with the only conception he could form of a Divine action on the world. His deep sense of human rights and deep sympathy with human feeling rebelled against a belief in Powers exercising a capricious tyranny over the world, and exacting human sacrifice as a propitiation of their offended majesty. His reverence for truth and his sense of the power and mystery of Nature led him to scorn the virtue attributed to an idolatrous and formal wors.h.i.+p. This att.i.tude of religious isolation, not more from his own time than from the subsequent course of thought, in a man of unusual sincerity and earnestness of feeling, is certainly among the most impressive phenomena of ancient literature. The spirit in which he denies the beliefs of the world is far from resembling the triumph of a cold philosophy over the religious a.s.sociations of mankind. He is moved even to a kind of poetical sympathy with some of the ceremonies and symbols of Paganism. A sense of religious awe,--a sympathetic recognition of the power of religious emotion over the hearts of men,--is expressed, for instance, in the lines which describe the procession of Cybele through the great cities and nations of the world. While guarding himself against the pollution of a base idolatry, he yet acknowledges not only the power of religious a.s.sociations to entwine themselves with human affections, but the intrinsic power of the truths symbolised in that wors.h.i.+p; viz. the truth of the majesty of Nature, and of the duties arising from the elemental affections to parents and country. In regard to all his religious impressions his intensity of feeling and imagination seems to place him on a solitary height, nearly as far apart from the followers of his own school as from their adversaries[11].

The same strength of heart and mind characterises that pa.s.sage of sustained and impa.s.sioned feeling, in which Lucretius encounters the thought of eternal death. The vast spiritual difference between the Roman poet and the Greek philosopher is apparent when we contrast the cold, unsympathetic language of the epistle to Menoeceus with the fervent and profoundly human tones of the third book of the poem of Lucretius. Epicurus escapes from the fear of death through a placid indifference of feeling, an easy contentment with the comforts of this life, a sense of relief in getting rid of 'the longing for immortality' ([Greek: ton tes athanasias pothon]). Lucretius, while realising the full pathos and solemnity of the thought of death, preaches submission to the inexorable decree of Nature with a stern consistency and a proud fort.i.tude combating the suggestions of human weakness.