Графични страници
PDF файл
ePub

original performance, which, discarding all arbitrary rules of literary criticism derived from authority, seeks for a proper set of rules in the fundamental principles of human nature itself. Dugald Stewart admits this to be the first systematic attempt to investigate the metaphysical principles of the fine

arts.

Lord Kames had, for many years, kept a commonplace book, into which he transcribed all anecdotes of man, in his various nations and degrees of civilisation, which occurred in the course of his reading, or appeared in the fugitive publications of the day. When advanced to near eighty years of age, he threw these together in a work entitled Sketches of the History of Man (two vols., 4to., 1773), which shows his usual ingenuity and acuteness, and presents many curious disquisitions on society, but is materially reduced in value by the absence of a proper authentication to many of the statements presented in it as illustrations. A volume, entitled Loose Hints on Education, published in 1781, and in which he anticipates some of the doctrines on that subject which have since been in vogue, completes the list of his philosophical works.

Lord Kames was also distinguished as an amateur agriculturist and improver of land, and some operations, devised by him for clearing away a superincumbent moss from his estate by means of water raised from a neighbouring river, help to mark the originality and boldness of his conceptions. This taste led to his producing, in 1777, a volume entitled The Gentleman Farmer, which he has himself sufficiently described as 'an attempt to improve agriculture by subjecting it to the test of rational principles.'

ing, touching, and smelling; for the latter feelings, seeming to exist externally at the organ of sense, are conceived to be merely corporeal.

The pleasures of the eye and the ear being thus elevated above those of the other external senses, acquire so much dignity, as to become a laudable entertainment. They are not, however, set on a level with the purely intellectual, being no less inferior in dignity to intellectual pleasures, than superior to the organic or corporeal: they indeed resemble the latter, being, like them, produced by external objects; but they also resemble the former, being, like them, produced without any sensible organic impression. Their mixed nature and middle place between organic and intellectual pleasures qualify them to associate with both; beauty heightens all the organic feelings, as well as the intellectual; harmony, though it aspires to inflame devotion, disdains not to improve the relish of a banquet.

The pleasures of the eye and the ear have other valuable properties beside those of dignity and elevation; being sweet and moderately exhilarating, they are in their tone equally distant from the turbulence of passion and the languor of indolence; and by that tone are perfectly well qualified not only to revive the spirits when sunk by sensual gratification, but also to relax them when overstrained in any violent pursuit. Here is a remedy provided for many distresses; and to be convinced of its salutary effects, it will be sufficient to run over the following particulars. Organic pleasures have naturally a short duration; when prolonged, they lose their relish; when indulged to excess, they beget satiety and disgust; and to restore contrived than the exhilarating pleasures of the eye a proper tone of mind, nothing can be more happily Lord Kames was a man of commanding aspect intellectual powers becomes painful by overstraining On the other hand, any intense exercise of and figure, but easy and familiar manners. He was the mind; cessation from such exercise gives not inthe life and soul of every private company, and it stant relief; it is necessary that the void be filled with was remarked of him that no subject seemed too some amusement, gently relaxing the spirits: organic great or too frivolous to derive lustre from his re-pleasure, which hath no relish but while we are in marks upon it. The taste and thought of his philo- vigour, is ill qualified for that office; but the finer sophical works have now placed them out of fashion, pleasures of sense, which occupy, without exhausting, but they contain many views and reflections from the mind, are finely qualified to restore its usual tone which modern inquirers might derive advantage. after severe application to study or business, as well as after satiety from sensual gratification.

[Pleasures of the Eye and the Ear.]

That nothing external is perceived till first it make an impression upon the organ of sense, is an observation that holds equally in every one of the external senses. But there is a difference as to our knowledge of that impression; in touching, tasting, and smelling, we are sensible of the impression; that, for example, which is made upon the hand by a stone, upon the palate by an apricot, and upon the nostrils by a rose. It is otherwise in seeing and hearing; for I am not sensible of the impression made upon my eye when I behold a tree, nor of the impression made upon my ear when I listen to a song. That difference in the manner of perceiving external objects, distinguisheth remarkably hearing and seeing from the other senses; and I am ready to show that it distinguisheth still more remarkably the feelings of the former from that of the latter; every feeling, pleasant or painful, must be in the mind; and yet, because in tasting, touching, and smelling, we are sensible of the impression made upon the organ, we are led to place there also the pleasant or painful feeling caused by that impression; but, with respect to seeing and hearing, being insensible of the organic impression, we are not misled to assign a wrong place to the pleasant or painful feelings caused by that impression; and therefore we naturally place them in the mind, where they really are; upon that account they are conceived to be more refined and spiritual than what are derived from tast

and ear.

Our first perceptions are of external objects, and our first attachments are to them. Organic pleasures take the lead; but the mind gradually ripening, relisheth more and more the pleasures of the eye and ear, which approach the purely mental without exhausting the spirits, and exceed the purely sensual without danger of satiety. The pleasures of the eye and ear have accordingly a natural aptitude to draw us from the immoderate gratification of sensual appetite; and the mind, once accustomed to enjoy a variety of external objects without being sensible of the organic impression, is prepared for enjoying internal objects where there cannot be an organic impression. Thus the Author of nature, by qualifying the human mind for a succession of enjoyments from low to high, leads it by gentle steps from the most grovelling corporeal pleasures, for which only it is fitted in the beginning of life, to those refined and sublime pleasures that are suited to its maturity.

But we are not bound down to this succession by any law of necessity: the God of nature offers it to us in order to advance our happiness; and it is sufficient that he hath enabled us to carry it on in a natural course. Nor has he made our task either disagreeable or difficult: on the contrary, the transition is sweet and easy from corporeal pleasures to the more refined pleasures of sense; and no less so from these to the exalted pleasures of morality and religion. We stand therefore engaged in honour as well as interest, to second the purposes of nature by culti

56

vating the pleasures of the eye and ear, those especially that require extraordinary culture, such as arise from poetry, painting, sculpture, music, gardening, and architecture. This especially is the duty of the opulent, who have leisure to improve their minds and their feelings. The fine arts are contrived to give pleasure to the eye and the ear, disregarding the inferior senses. A taste for these arts is a plant that grows naturally in many soils; but without culture, scarce to perfection in any soil: it is susceptible of much refinement, and is by proper care greatly improved. In this respect a taste in the fine arts goes hand in hand with the moral sense, to which indeed it is nearly allied: both of them discover what is right and what is wrong: fashion, temper, and education, have an influence to vitiate both, or to preserve them pure and untainted: neither of them are arbitrary nor local, being rooted in human nature, and governed by principles common to all men. The design of the present undertaking, which aspires not to morality, is to examine the sensitive branch of human nature, to trace the objects that are naturally agreeable, as well as those that are naturally disagreeable; and by these means to discover, if we can, what are the genuine principles of the fine arts. The man who aspires to be a critic in these arts must pierce still deeper; he must acquire a clear perception of what objects are lofty, what low, what proper or improper, what manly, and what mean or trivial; hence a foundation for reasoning upon the taste of any individual, and for passing a sentence upon it: where it is conformable to principles, we can pronounce with certainty that it is correct; otherwise, that it is incorrect and perhaps whimsical. Thus the fine arts, like morals, become a rational science; and, like morals, may be cultivated to a high degree of refinement.

Manifold are the advantages of criticism when thus studied as a rational science. In the first place, a thorough acquaintance with the principles of the fine arts redoubles the pleasure we derive from them. To the man who resigns himself to feeling, without interposing any judgment, poetry, music, painting, are mere pastime. In the prime of life, indeed, they are delightful, being supported by the force of novelty and the heat of imagination; but in time they lose their relish, and are generally neglected in the maturity of life, which disposes to more serious and more important occupations. To those who deal in criticism as a regular science governed by just principles, and giving scope to judgment as well as to fancy, the fine arts are a favourite entertainment, and in old age maintain that relish which they produce in the morning of life.

DR BEATTIE.

Essays on Poetry, Music, &c. He also published a digest of his college lectures, under the title of Elements of Moral Science. In these works, though not profoundly philosophical, the author's 'lively relish for the sublime and beautiful, his clear and elegant style,' and his happy quotations and critical examples, must strike every reader.

[On the Love of Nature.]

[From Beattie's Essays."]

Homer's beautiful description of the heavens and earth, as they appear in a calm evening by the light of the moon and stars, concludes with this circumstance - And the heart of the shepherd is glad.' Madame Dacier, from the turn she gives to the passage in her version, seems to think, and Pope, in order perhaps to make out his couplet, insinuates, that the gladness of the shepherd is owing to his sense of the utility of those luminaries. And this may in part be the case; but this is not in Homer; nor is it a necessary consideration. It is true that, in contemplating the material universe, they who discern the causes and effects of things must be more rapturously entertained than those who perceive nothing but shape and size, colour; and motion. Yet, in the mere outside of nature's works (if I may so express myself), there is a splendour and a magnificence to which even untutored minds cannot attend without great delight.

Not that all peasants or all philosophers are equally susceptible of these charming impressions. It is strange to observe the callousness of some men, before whom all the glories of heaven and earth pass in daily succession, without touching their hearts, elevating their fancy, or leaving any durable remembrance. Even of those who pretend to sensibility, how many are there to whom the lustre of the rising or setting sun, the sparkling concave of the midnight sky, the mountain forest tossing and roaring to the storm, or warbling with all the melodies of a summer evening; the sweet interchange of hill and dale, shade and sunshine, grove, lawn, and water, which an extensive landscape offers to the view; the scenery of the ocean, so lovely, so majestic, and so tremendous, and the many pleasing varieties of the animal and vegetable kingdom, could never afford so much real satisfaction as the steams and noise of a ball-room, the insipid fiddling and squeaking of an opera, or the vexations and wranglings of a card-table!

But some minds there are of a different make, who, even in the early part of life, receive from the contemplation of nature a species of delight which they would hardly exchange for any other; and who, as avarice and ambition are not the infirmities of that period, would, with equal sincerity and rapture, exclaim

I care not, Fortune, what you me deny ; You cannot rob me of free nature's grace; You cannot shut the windows of the sky, Through which Aurora shows her brightening face; You cannot bar my constant feet to trace The woods and lawns by living stream at eve.' Such minds have always in them the seeds of true taste, and frequently of imitative genius. At least, though their enthusiastic or visionary turn of mind, as the man of the world would call it, should not always incline them to practise poetry or painting, we need not scruple to affirm that, without some portion of this enthusiasm, no person ever became a true poet or painter. For he who would imitate, the works of nature, must first accurately observe them, and accurate observation is to be expected from those only who take great pleasure in it.

Among the answerers of Hume was DR BEATTIE the poet, who, in 1770, published his Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth, in opposition to Sophistry and Scepticism. Inferior to most of the metaphysicians in logical precision, equanimity of temper, or patient research, Beattie brought great zeal and fervour to his task, a respectable share of philosophical knowledge, and a better command of popular language and imaginative illustration than most of his fellow-labourers in that dry and dusty field. These qualities, joined to the pious and beneficial tendency of his work, enabled him to produce a highly popular treatise. No work of the kind was ever so successful. It has fallen into equal neglect with other metaphysical treatises of the age, and is now considered unworthy the talents of its author. It has neither the dignity nor the acumen of the original philosopher, and is unsuited to the ordinary To a mind thus disposed, no part of creation is inreligious reader. The best of Beattie's prose works different. In the crowded city and howling wilderare his Dissertations, Moral and Critical, and hisness, in the cultivated province and solitary isle, in

the flowery lawn and craggy mountain, in the murmur of the rivulet and in the uproar of the ocean, in the radiance of summer and gloom of winter, in the thunder of heaven and in the whisper of the breeze, he still finds something to rouse or to soothe his imagination, to draw forth his affections, or to employ his understanding. And from every mental energy that is not attended with pain, and even from some of those that are, as moderate terror and pity, a sound mind derives satisfaction; exercise being equally necessary to the body and the soul, and to both equally productive of health and pleasure.

fishes sporting in the woods, and elephants walking on the sea. Could such figures and combinations give pleasure, or merit the appellation of sublime or beautiful? Should we hesitate to pronounce their author mad? And are the absurdities of madmen proper subjects either of amusement or of imitation to reasonable beings?

[On Scottish Music.]

[From the same.]

This happy sensibility to the beauties of nature should be cherished in young persons. It engages them to contemplate the Creator in his wonderful works; it purifies and harmonises the soul, and pre-lody of one people should differ from that of another, pares it for moral and intellectual discipline; it supplies a never-failing source of amusement; it contributes even to bodily health; and, as a strict analogy subsists between material and moral beauty, it leads the heart by an easy transition from the one to the other, and thus recommends virtue for its transcendent loveliness, and makes vice appear the object of contempt and abomination. An intimate acquaintance with the best descriptive poets-Spenser, Milton, and Thomson, but above all with the divine Georgicjoined to some practice in the art of drawing, will promote this amiable sensibility in early years; for then the face of nature has novelty superadded to its other charms, the passions are not pre-engaged, the heart is free from care, and the imagination warm and romantic.

But not to insist longer on those ardent emotions that are peculiar to the enthusiastic disciple of nature, may it not be affirmed of all men without exception, or at least of all the enlightened part of mankind, that they are gratified by the contemplation of things natural as opposed to unnatural? Monstrous sights please but for a moment, if they please at all; for they derive their charm from the beholder's amazement, which is quickly over. I have read, indeed, of a man of rank in Sicily who chooses to adorn his villa with pictures and statues of most unnatural deformity; but it is a singular instance; and one would not be much more surprised to hear of a person living without food, or growing fat by the use of poison. To say of anything that it is contrary to nature, denotes censure and disgust on the part of the speaker; as the epithet natural intimates an agreeable quality, and seems for the most part to imply that a thing is as it ought to be, suitable to our own taste, and congenial with our own constitution. Think with what sentiments we should peruse a poem in which nature was totally misrepresented, and principles of thought and of operation supposed to take place repugnant to everything we had seen or heard of; in which, for example, avarice and coldness were ascribed to youth, and prodigality and passionate attachment to the old; in which men were made to act at random, sometimes according to character, and sometimes contrary to it; in which cruelty and envy were productive of love, and beneficence and kind affection of hatred; in which beauty was invariably the object of dislike, and ugliness of desire; in which society was rendered happy by atheism and the promiscuous perpetration of crimes, and justice and fortitude were held in universal contempt. Or think how we should relish a painting where no regard was had to the proportions, colours, or any of the physical laws of nature; where the ears and eyes of animals were placed in their shoulders; where the sky was green, and the grass crimson; where trees grew with their branches in the earth, and their roots in the air; where men were seen fighting after their heads were cut off, ships sailing on the land, lions entangled in cobwebs, sheep preying on dead carcases,

There is a certain style of melody peculiar to each musical country, which the people of that country are apt to prefer to every other style. That they should prefer their own, is not surprising; and that the meis not more surprising, perhaps, than that the language of one people should differ from that of another. But there is something not unworthy of notice in the particular expression and style that characterise the music of one nation or province, and distinguish it from every other sort of music. Of this diversity Scotland supplies a striking example. The native melody of the Highlands and Western Isles is as different from that of the southern part of the kingdom as the Irish or Erse language is different from the English or Scotch. In the conclusion of a discourse on music, as it relates to the mind, it will not perhaps be impertinent to offer a conjecture on the cause of these peculiarities; which, though it should not-and indeed I am satisfied that it will not-fully account for any one of them, may, however, incline the reader to think that they are not unaccountable, and may also throw some faint light on this part of philosophy.

Every thought that partakes of the nature of passion has a correspondent expression in the look and gesture; and so strict is the union between the passion and its outward sign, that, where the former is not in some degree felt, the latter can never be perfectly natural, but if assumed, becomes awkward mimicry, instead of that genuine imitation of nature which draws forth the sympathy of the beholder. If therefore there be, in the circumstances of particular nations or persons, anything that gives a peculiarity to their passions and thoughts, it seems reasonable to expect that they will also have something peculiar in the expression of their countenance and even in the form of their features. Caius Marius, Jugurtha, Tamerlane, and some other great warriors, are celebrated for a peculiar ferocity of aspect, which they had no doubt contracted from a perpetual and unrestrained exertion of fortitude, contempt, and other violent emotions. These produced in the face their correspondent expressions, which, being often repeated, became at last as habitual to the features as the sentiments they arose from were to the heart. Savages, whose thoughts are little inured to control, have more of this significancy of look than those men who, being born and bred in civilised nations, are accustomed from their childhood to suppress every emotion that tends to interrupt the peace of society. And while the bloom of youth lasts, and the smoothness of feature peculiar to that period, the human face is less marked with any strong character than in old age. A peevish or surly stripling may elude the eye of the physiognomist; but a wicked old man, whose visage does not betray the evil temperature of his heart, must have more cunning than it would be prudent for him to acknowledge. Even by the trade or profession the human countenance may be characterised. They who employ themselves in the nicer mechanic arts, that require the earnest attention of the artist, do generally contract a fixedness of feature suited to that one uniform sentiment which engrosses them while at work. Whereas other artists, whose work requires less attention, and who may ply their trade and

the Scripture to have proceeded from the author of nature, may well believe that the same difficulties exist in it as in the constitution of nature. Hence, Butler infers that he who denies the Scripture to have come from God, on account of difficulties found in it, may, for the same reason, deny the world to have been formed by Him. Inexplicable difficulties are found in the course of nature; no sound theist can therefore be surprised to find similar difficulties in the Christian religion. If both proceed from the same author, the wonder would rather be, that, even on this inferior ground of difficulty and adaptation to the comprehension of man, there should not be found the impress of the same hand, whose works we can trace but a very little way, and whose word equally transcends on some points the feeble efforts of unassisted reason. All Butler's arguments on natural and revealed religion are marked by profound thought and sagacity. In a volume of sermons published by him, he shines equally as an ethical philosopher. In the three first, on human nature, he has laid the science, of morals on a surer foundation than any previous writer. After showing that our social affections are disinterested, he proceeds to vindicate the supremacy of the moral sentiments. Man is, in his view, a law to himself; but the intimations of this law are not to be deduced from the strength or temporary predominance of any single appetite or passion. They are to be deduced from the dictates of one principle, which is evidently intended to rule over the other parts of our nature, and which issues its mandates with authority. This master principle is conscience, which rests upon rectitude as its object, as disinterestedly as the social affections rest upon their appropriate objects, and as naturally as the appetite of hunger is satisfied with food. The ethical system of Butler has been adopted by Reid, Stewart, and Brown. Sir James Mackintosh (who acknowledged that Bishop Butler was his father in philosophy) made an addition to it: he took the principle of utility as a test or criterion of the rectitude or virtue which, with Butler, he maintained to be the proper object of our moral affections. The life of this eminent prelate affords a pleasing instance of talent winning its way to distinction in the midst of difficulties. He was born in 1692, the son of a shopkeeper at Wantage, in Berkshire. His father was a Presbyterian, and intended his son to be a minister of the same persuasion, but the latter conformed to the establishment, took orders, and was successively preacher at the Rolls chapel, prebendary of Rochester, clerk of the closet to the queen, bishop of Bristol, and bishop of Durham. He owed much to Queen Caroline, who had a philosophical taste, and valued his talents and virtues. Butler died on the 16th of June 1752.

[ocr errors]

BISHOP WARBURTON.

No literary man of this period engrossed in his own time a larger share of the attention of the learned world, not to speak of the public at large, than did WILLIAM WARBURTON, bishop of Gloucester (1698-1779). Prodigious powers of study and of expression, a bold and original way of thinking, and indomitable self-will and arrogance, were the leading characteristics of this extraordinary man, who unfortunately was too eager to astonish and arrest the attention of mankind, to care for any more beneficial result from his literary exertions; and whose writings have, accordingly, after passing like a splendid meteor across the horizon of his own age, sunk into all but oblivion. He was the son of an attorney at Newark, and entered life in the same

[merged small][graphic][merged small]

clerical profession. He took deacon's orders, and by a dedication to a small and obscure volume of translations published in 1723, obtained a presentation to a small vicarage. He now threw himself amidst the inferior literary society of the metropolis, and sought for subsistence and advancement by his pen. On obtaining from a patron the rectory of Brand Broughton, in Lincolnshire, he retired thither, and devoted himself for a long series of years to reading. His first work of any note was published in 1736, under the title of Alliance between Church and State, which, though scarcely calculated to please either party in the church, was extensively read, and brought the author into notice. In the next, The Divine Legation of Moses, of which the first volume appeared in 1738, and the remaining four in the course of several years thereafter, the gigantic scholarship of Warburton shone out in all its vastness. It had often been objected to the pretensions of the Jewish religion, that it presented nowhere any acknowledgment of the principle of a future state of rewards and punishments. Warburton, who delighted in paradox, instead of attempting to deny this or explain it away, at once acknowledged it, but asserted that therein lay the strongest argument for the divine mission of Moses. To establish this point, he ransacked the whole domains of pagan antiquity, and reared such a mass of curious and confounding argument, that mankind might be said to be awed by it into a partial concession to the author's views. He never completed the work; he became, indeed, weary of it; and perhaps the fallacy of the hypothesis was first secretly acknowledged by himself. If it had been consecrated to truth, instead of paradox, it would have been by far the most illustrious book of its age. As it is, we only look into it to wonder at its endless learning and mispent ingenuity.

The merits of the author, or his worldly wisdom, brought him preferment in the church: he rose through the grades of prebend of Gloucester, prebend of Durham, and dean of Bristol, to be (1759)

bishop of Gloucester-a remarkable transition for the Newark attorney.

gods were dead men deified, preserved in their sacred writings, and confirmed by monumental records inIt would be tedious to detail the other literary scribed to the gods themselves, who were there said to adventures of this arrogant prelate. The only one be interred.' So far was not amiss; but then, in the which falls particularly in our way is his edition of genuine spirit of his class, who never cultivate a truth Pope's works, for the publication of which he had but in order to graft a lie upon it, he pretended' that obtained a patent right in consequence of the poet's dead mortals were the first gods, and that an imabequest. The annotations of Warburton upon Pope, ginary divinity in these early heroes and conquerors perverting the author's meaning in numberless in- created the idea of a superior power, and introduced stances, and full of malignity against half the learned the practice of religious worship amongst men.' The men of the age, were a disgrace to contemporary learned reader sees below [note in Greek omitted] literature. Yet for many years the works of Pope that our freethinker is true to his cause, and encould not be possessed without this monstrous in- deavours to verify the fundamental principle of his cumbrance. The latter years of Warburton were sect, that fear first made gods, even in that very inspent in a melancholy state of mental weakness, stance where the contrary passion seems to have been partly occasioned by grief for the loss of a son; for, at its height, the time when men made gods of their like the butcher animals, this man, ruthless to all deceased benefactors. A little matter of address hides others, had kind feelings towards his own kindred. the shame of so perverse a piece of malice. He repreTen years after his death, his great work is spoken sents those founders of society and fathers of their of by Gibbon as already a brilliant ruin. It is now country under the idea of destructive conquerors, who rarely referred to, its learning being felt as no at- by mere force and fear had brought men into subjectraction where the solid qualities of truth are want- tion and slavery. On this account it was that indiging. Warburton is indeed as perfect a proof of the nant antiquity concurred in giving Euhemerus the futility of talent without moral direction, as could proper name of atheist, which, however, he would be produced from the meanest walks of literature. hardly have escaped, though he had done no more He gave all to a bad ambition, in which the chief than divulge the secret of the mysteries, and had not object seems to have been to make his fellow crea-poisoned his discovery with this impious and foreign tures wonder at and stand in awe of him. Such addition, so contrary to the true spirit of that secret. feelings as he excited are doomed to be transient. They have passed away; and Warburton, having never conferred any solid benefit on his kind, is already little else than a name.

This detection had been long dreaded by the orthodox protectors of pagan worship; and they were provided of a temporary defence in their intricate and properly perplexed system of symbolic adoration. But this would do only to stop a breach for the present, till a better could be provided, and was too

[The Grecian Mythology-The Various Lights in which weak to stand alone against so violent an attack.

it was regarded.]

[From the 'Divine Legation.']

The philosophers, therefore, now took up the defence of paganism where the priests had left it, and to the others' symbols added their own allegories, for a Here matters rested: and the vulgar faith seems to second cover to the absurdities of the ancient mythohave remained a long time undisturbed. But as the logy; for all the genuine sects of philosophy, as we age grew refined, and the Greeks became inquisitive have observed, were steady patriots, legislation making and learned, the common mythology began to give one essential part of their philosophy; and to legisoffence. The speculative and more delicate were late without the foundation of a national religion, shocked at the absurd and immoral stories of their was, in their opinion, building castles in the air. So gods, and scandalised to find such things make an that we are not to wonder they took the alarm, and authentic part of their story. It may, indeed, be opposed these insulters of the public worship with all thought matter of wonder how such tales, taken up in their vigour. But as they never lost sight of their a barbarous age, came not to sink into oblivion as the proper character, they so contrived that the defence age grew more knowing, from mere abhorrence of their of the national religion should terminate in a recomindecencies and shame of their absurdities. Without mendation of their philosophic speculations. Hence, doubt this had been their fortune, but for an unlucky their support of the public worship, and their evasion circumstance. The great poets of Greece, who had of Euhemerus's charge, turned upon this proposition, most contributed to refine the public taste and man-That the whole ancient mythology was no other ners, and were now grown into a kind of sacred authority, had sanctified these silly legends by their writings, which time had now consigned to immortality.

Vulgar paganism, therefore, in such an age as this, lying open to the attacks of curious and inquisitive men, would not, we may well think, be long at rest. It is true, freethinking then lay under great difficulties and discouragements. To insult the religion of one's country, which is now the mark of learned distinction, was branded in the ancient world with public infamy. Yet freethinkers there were, who, as is their wont, together with the public worship of their country, threw off all reverence for religion in general. Amongst these was Euhemerus, the Messenian, and, by what we can learn, the most distinguished of this tribe. This man, in mere wantonness of heart, began his attacks on religion by divulging the secret of the mysteries. But as it was capital to do this directly and professedly, he contrived to cover his perfidy and malice by the intervention of a kind of Utopian romance. He pretended, that in a certain city, which he came to in his travels, he found this grand secret, that the

than the vehicle of physical, moral, and divine knowledge.' And to this it is that the learned Eusebius refers, where he says, 'That a new race of men refined their old gross theology, and gave it an honester look, and brought it nearer to the truth of things.'

However, this proved a troublesome work, and, after all, ineffectual for the security of men's private morals, which the example of the licentious story according to the letter would not fail to influence, how well soever the allegoric interpretation was calculated to cover the public honour of religion; so that the more ethical of the philosophers grew peevish with what gave them so much trouble, and answered so little to the interior of religious practice. This made them break out, from time to time, into hasty resentments against their capital poets; unsuitable, one would think, to the dignity of the authors of such noble recondite truths as they would persuade us to believe were treasured up in their writings. Hence it was that Plato banished Homer from his republic, and that Pythagoras, in one of his extramundane adventures, saw both Homer and Hesiod doing penance in hell, and hung up there for examples, to be bleached

« ПредишнаНапред »