Part II: The Greek World
Among the Greeks we feel ourselves immediately at home, for we are in the region
of Spirit; and though the origin of the nation, as also its philological
peculiarities, may be traced farther – even to India – the proper Emergence, the
true Palingenesis of Spirit must be looked for in Greece first. At an earlier
stage I compared the Greek world with the period of adolescence; not, indeed, in
that sense, that youth bears within it a serious, anticipative destiny, and
consequently by the very conditions of its culture urges towards an ulterior aim
– presenting thus an inherently incomplete and immature form, and being then
most defective when it would deem itself perfect – but in that sense, that youth
does not yet present the activity of work, does not yet exert itself for a
definite intelligent aim – but rather exhibits a concrete freshness of the
soul’s life. It appears in the sensuous, actual world, as Incarnate Spirit and
Spiritualized Sense – in a Unity which owed its origin to Spirit. Greece
presents to us the cheerful aspect of youthful freshness, of Spiritual vitality.
It is here first that advancing Spirit makes itself the content of its volition
and its knowledge; but in such a way that State, Family, Law, Religion, are at
the same time objects aimed at by individuality, while the latter is
individuality only in virtue of those aims. The [full-grown] man, on the other
hand, devotes his life to labor for an objective aim; which he pursues
consistently, even at the cost of his individuality.
The highest form that floated before Greek imagination was Achilles, the Son
of the Poet, the Homeric Youth of the Trojan War. Homer is the element in which
the Greek world lives, as man does in the air. The Greek life is a truly
youthful achievement. Achilles, the ideal youth, of poetry, commenced it:
Alexander the Great, the ideal youth of reality, concluded it. Both appear in
contest with Asia. Achilles, as the principal figure in the national expedition
of the Greeks against Troy, does not stand at its head, but is subject to the
Chief of Chiefs; he cannot be made the leader without becoming a fantastic
untenable conception. On the contrary, the second youth, Alexander – the freest
and finest individuality that the real world has ever produced – advances to the
head of this youthful life that has now perfected itself, and accomplishes the
revenge against Asia. We have, then, to distinguish three periods in Greek
history: the first, that of the growth of real Individuality; the second, that
of its independence and prosperity in external conquest (through contact with
the previous World-historical people); and the third, the period of its decline
and fall, in its encounter with the succeeding organ of World-History. The
period from its origin to its internal completeness (that which enables a people
to make head against its predecessor) includes its primary culture. If the
nation has a basis – such as the Greek world has in the Oriental – a foreign
culture enters as an element into its primary condition, and it has a double
culture, one original, the other of foreign suggestion. The uniting of these two
elements constitutes its training; and the first period ends with the
combination of its forces to produce its real and proper vigor, which then turns
against the very element that had been its basis. The second period is that of
victory and prosperity. But while the nation directs its energies outwards, it
becomes unfaithful to its principles at home, and internal dissension follows
upon the ceasing of the external excitement. In Art and Science, too, this shows
itself in the separation of the Ideal from the Real. Here is the point of
decline. The third period is that of ruin, through contact with the nation that
embodies a higher Spirit. The same process, it may be stated once for all, will
meet us in the life of every world-historical people.
Section I: The Elements of the Greek Spirit.
Greece is [that form of] the Substantial [i.e., of Moral and Intellectual
Principle], which is at the same time individual. The Universal [the Abstract],
as such, is overcome;[16] the submersion in Nature no longer exists, and
consentaneously the unwieldy character of geographical relations has also
vanished. The country now under consideration is a section of territory
spreading itself in various forms through the sea – a multitude of islands, and
a continent which itself exhibits insular features. The Peloponnesus is
connected with the continent only by a narrow isthmus: the whole of Greece is
indented by bays in numberless shapes. The partition into small divisions of
territory is the universal characteristic, while at the same time, the
relationship and connection between them is facilitated by the sea. We find here
mountains, plains, valleys, and streams of limited extent: no great river, no
absolute Valley-Plain presents itself; but the ground is diversified by
mountains and rivers in such a way as to allow no prominence to a single massive
feature. We see no such display of physical grandeur as is exhibited in the East
– no stream such as the Ganges, the Indus, etc., on whose plains a race
delivered over to monotony is stimulated to no change, because its horizon
always exhibits one unvarying form. On the contrary, that divided and multiform
character everywhere prevails which perfectly corresponds with the varied life
of Greek races and the versatility of the Greek Spirit.
This is the elementary character of the Spirit of the Greeks, implying the
origination of their culture from independent individualities; – a condition in
which individuals take their own ground, and are not, from the very beginning,
patriarchally united by a bond of Nature, but realize a union through some
origin of their moral life the Greeks have preserved, with grateful
recollection, in a form of recognition which we may call mythological. In their
mythology we have a definite record of the introduction of agriculture by
Triptolemus, who was instructed by Ceres, and of the institution of marriage,
etc. Prometheus, whose origin is referred to the distant Caucasus, is celebrated
as having first taught men the production and the use of fire. The introduction
of iron was likewise of great importance to the Greeks; and while Homer speaks
only of bronze, Æschylus calls iron “Scythian.” The introduction of the olive,
of the art of spinning and weaving, and the creation of the horse by Poseidon,
belong to the same category.
More historical than these rudiments of culture is the alleged arrival of
foreigners; tradition tells us how the various states were founded by such
foreigners. Thus, Athens owes its origin to Cecrops, an Egyptian, whose history,
however, is involved in obscurity. The race of Deucalion, the son of Prometheus,
is brought into connection with the various Greek tribes. Pelops of Phrygia, the
son of Tantalus, is also mentioned ; next, Danaus, from Egypt: from him descend
Acrisius, Danae, and Perseus. Pelops is said to have brought great wealth with
him to the Peloponnesus, and to have acquired great respect and power there.
Danaus settled in Argos. Especially important is the arrival of Cadmus, of
Phoenician origin, with whom phonetic writing is said to have been introduced
into Greece; Herodotus refers it to Phoenicia, and ancient inscriptions then
extant are cited to support the assertion. Cadmus, according to the legend,
founded Thebes.
We thus observe a colonization by civilized peoples, who were in advance of
the Greeks in point of culture: though we cannot compare this colonization with
that of the English in North America, for the latter have not been blended with
the aborigines, but have dispossessed them; whereas in the case of the settlers
in Greece the adventitious and autochthonic elements were mixed together. The
date assigned to the arrival of these colonists is very remote – the fourteenth
and fifteenth century before Christ. Cadmus is said to have founded Thebes about
1490 B.C. – a date with which the Exodus of Moses from Egypt (1500 B.C.) nearly
coincides. Amphictyon is also mentioned among the Founders of Greek
institutions; he is said to have established at Thermopylae a union between many
small tribes of Hellas proper and Thessaly – a combination with which the great
Amphictyonic league is said to have originated. These foreigners, then, are
reputed to have established fixed centres in Greece by the erection of
fortresses and the founding of royal houses. In Argolis, the walls of which the
ancient fortresses consisted, were called Cyclopian; some of them have been
discovered even in recent times, since, on account of their solidity, they are
indestructible.
These walls consist partly of irregular blocks, whose interstices are filled
up with small stones – partly of masses of stones carefully fitted into each
other. Such walls are those of Tiryns and Mycenae. Even now the gate with the
lions, at Mycenas, can be recognized by the description of Pausanias. It is
stated of Prcetus, who ruled in Argos, that he brought with him from Lycia the
Cyclopes who built these walls. It is, however, supposed that they were erected
by the ancient Pelasgi. To the fortresses protected by such walls the princes of
the heroic times generally attached their dwellings. Especially remarkable are
the Treasure-houses built by them, such as the Treasure-house of Minyas at
Orchomenus, and that of Atreus at Mycenas. These fortresses, then, were the
nuclei of small states; they gave a greater security to agriculture; they
protected commercial intercourse against robbery. They were, however, as
Thucydides informs us, not placed in the immediate vicinity of the sea, on
account of piracy; maritime towns being of later date. Thus with those royal
abodes originated the firm establishment of society. The relation of princes to
subjects, and to each other, we learn best from Homer. It did not depend on a
state of things established by law, but. on superiority in riches, possessions,
martial accoutrements, personal bravery, pre-eminence in insight and wisdom, and
lastly, on descent and ancestry; for the princes, as heroes, were regarded as of
a higher race. Their subjects obeyed them, not as distinguished from them by
conditions of Caste, nor as in a state of serfdom, nor in the patriarchal
relation – according to which the chief is only the head of the tribe or family
to which all belong – nor yet as the result of the express necessity for a
constitutional government; but only from the need, universally felt, of being
held together, and of obeying a ruler accustomed to command – without envy and
ill-will towards him. The Prince has just so much personal authority as he
possesses the ability to acquire and to assert; but as this superiority is only
the individually heroic, resting on personal merit, it does not continue long.
Thus in Homer we see the suitors of Penelope taking possession of the property
of the absent Ulysses, without showing the slightest respect to his son.
Achilles, in his inquiries about his father, when Ulysses descends to Hades,
indicates the supposition that, as he is old, he will be no longer honored.
Manners are still very simple: princes prepare their own repasts; and Ulysses
labors at the construction of his own house. In Homer’s Iliad we find a King of
Kings, a generalissimo in the great national undertaking – but the other
magnates environ him as a freely deliberating council; the prince is honored,
but he is obliged to arrange everything to the satisfaction of the others; he
indulges in violent conduct towards Achilles, but, in revenge, the latter
withdraws from the struggle. Equally lax is the relation of the several chiefs
to the people at large, among whom there are always individuals who claim
attention and respect. The various peoples do not fight as mercenaries of the
prince in his battles, nor as a stupid serf-like herd driven to the contest, nor
yet in their own interest; but as the companions of their honored chieftain – as
witnesses of his exploits, and his defenders in peril. A perfect resemblance to
these relations is also presented in the Greek Pantheon. Zeus is the Father of
the Gods, but each one of them has his own will; Zeus respects them, and they
him: he may sometimes scold and threaten them, and they then allow his will to
prevail or retreat grumbling; but they do not permit matters to come to an
extremity, and Zeus so arranges matters on the whole – by making this concession
to one, that to another – as to produce satisfaction. In the terrestrial, as
well as in the Olympian world, there is, therefore, only a lax bond of unity
maintained; royalty has not yet become monarchy, for it is only in a more
extensive society that the need of the latter is felt.
While this state of things prevailed, and social relations were such as have
been described, that striking and great event took place – the union of the
whole of Greece in a national undertaking, viz., the Trojan War; with which
began that more extensive connection, with Asia which had very important results
for the Greeks. (The expedition of Jason to Colchis – also mentioned by the
poets – and which bears an earlier date, was, as compared with the war of Troy,
a very limited and isolated undertaking.) The occasion of that united expedition
is said to have been the violation of the laws of hospitality by the son of an
Asiatic prince, in carrying off the wife of his host. Agamemnon assembles the
princes of Greece through the power and influence which he possesses. Thucydides
ascribes his authority to his hereditary sovereignty, combined with naval power
(Hom. II. ii. 108), in which he was far superior to the rest. It appears,
however, that the combination was effected without external compulsion, and that
the whole armament was convened simply on the strength of individual consent.
The Hellenes were then brought to act unitedly, to an extent of which there is
no subsequent example. The result of their exertions was the conquest and
destruction of Troy, though they had no design of making it a permanent
possession. No external result, therefore, in the way of settlement ensued, any
more than an enduring political union, as the effect of the uniting of the
nation in the accomplishment of this single achievement. But the poet supplied
an imperishable portraiture of their youth and of their national spirit, to the
imagination of the Greek people; and the picture of this beautiful human heroism
hovered as a directing ideal before their whole development and culture. So
likewise, in the Middle Ages, we see the whole of Christendom united to attain
one object – the conquest of the Holy Sepulchre; but, in spite of all the
victories achieved, with just as little permanent result. The Crusades are the
Trojan War of newly awakened Christendom, waged against the simple, homogeneous
clearness of Mahometanism.
The royal houses perished, partly as the consequence of particular
atrocities, partly through gradual extinction. There was no strictly moral bond
connecting them with the tribes which they governed. The same relative position
is occupied by the people and the royal houses in the Greek Tragedy also. The
people is the Chorus – passive, deedless: the heroes perform the deeds, and
incur the consequent responsibility. There is nothing in common between them;
the people have no directing power, but only appeal to the gods. Such heroic
personalities as those of the princes in question, are so remarkably suited for
subjects of dramatic art on this very account – that they form their resolutions
independently and individually, and are not guided by universal laws binding on
every citizen; their conduct and their ruin are individual. The people appears
separated from the royal houses, and these are regarded as an alien body – a
higher race, fighting out the battles and undergoing the penalties of their
fate, for themselves alone. Royalty having performed that which it had to
perform, thereby rendered itself superfluous. The several dynasties are the
agents of their own destruction, or perish not as the result of animosity, or of
struggles on the side of the people: rather the families of the sovereigns are
left in calm enjoyment of their power – a proof that the democratic government
which followed is not regarded as something absolutely diverse. How sharply do
the annals of other times contrast with this!
This fall of the royal houses occurs after the Trojan war, and many changes
now present themselves. The Peloponnesus was conquered by the Heraclidae, who
introduced a calmer state of things, which was not again interrupted by the
incessant migrations of races. The history now becomes more obscure; and though
the several occurrences of the Trojan war are very circumstantially described to
us, we are uncertain respecting the important transactions of the time
immediately following, for a space of many centuries. No united undertaking
distinguishes them, unless we regard as such that of which Thucydides speaks,
viz., the war between the Chalcidians and Eretrians in Euboea, in which many
nations took part. The towns vegetate in isolation, or at most distinguish
themselves by war with their neighbors. Yet, they enjoy prosperity in this
isolated condition, by means of trade ; a kind of progress to which their being
rent by many party-struggles offers no opposition. In the same way, we observe
in the Middle Ages the towns of Italy – which, both internally and externally,
were engaged in continual struggle – attaining so high a degree of prosperity.
The flourishing state of the Greek towns at that time is proved, according to
Thucydides, also by the colonies sent out in every direction. Thus, Athens
colonized Ionia and several islands; and colonies from the Peloponnesus settled
in Italy and Sicily. Colonies, on the other hand, became relatively mother
states; e.g., Miletus, which founded many cities on the Propontis and the Black
Sea. This sending out of colonies – especially during the period between the
Trojan war and Cyrus – presents us with a remarkable phenomenon. It can be thus
explained. In the several towns the people had the governmental power in their
hands, since they gave the final decision in political affairs. In consequence
of the long repose enjoyed by them, the population and the development of the
community advanced rapidly; and the immediate result was the amassing of great
riches, contemporaneously with which fact great want and poverty make their
appearance. Industry, in our sense, did not exist; and the lands were soon
occupied. Nevertheless a part of the poorer classes would not submit to the
degradations of poverty, for everyone felt himself a free citizen. The only
expedient, therefore, that remained, was colonization. In another country, those
who suffered distress in their own, might seek a free soil, and gain a living as
free citizens by its cultivation. Colonization thus became a means of
maintaining some degree of equality among the citizens; but this means is only a
palliative, and the original inequality, founded on the difference of property,
immediately reappears. The old passions were rekindled with fresh violence, and
riches were soon made use of for securing power: thus “Tyrants” gained
ascendancy in the cities of Greece. Thucydides says, “When Greece increased in
riches, Tyrants arose in the cities, and the Greeks devoted themselves more
zealously to the sea.” At the time of Cyrus, the History of Greece acquires its
peculiar interest; we see the various states now displaying their particular
character. This is the date, too, of the formation of the distinct Greek Spirit.
Religion and political institutions are developed with it, and it is these
important phases of national life which must now occupy our attention.
In tracing up the rudiments of Greek culture, we first recall attention to
the fact that the physical condition of the country does not exhibit such a
characteristic unity, such a uniform mass, as to exercise a powerful influence
over the inhabitants. On the contrary, it is diversified, and produces no
decided impression. Nor have we here the unwieldy unity of a family or national
combination; but, in the presence of scenery and displays of elemental power
broken up into fragmentary forms, men’s attention is more largely directed to
themselves, and to the extension of their immature capabilities. Thus we see the
Greeks – divided and separated from each other – thrown back upon their inner
spirit and personal energy, yet at the same time most variously excited and
cautiously circumspect. We behold them quite undetermined and irresolute in the
presence of Nature, dependent on its contingencies, and listening anxiously to
each signal from the external world; but, on the other hand, intelligently
taking cognizance of and appropriating that outward existence, and showing
boldness and independent vigor in contending with it. These are the simple
elements of their culture and religion. In tracing up their mythological
conceptions, we find natural objects forming the basis – not en masse, however;
only in dissevered forms. The Diana of Ephesus (that is, Nature as the universal
Mother), the Cybele and Astarte of Syria – such comprehensive conceptions
remained Asiatic, and were not transmitted to Greece. For the Greeks only watch
the objects of Nature, and form surmises respecting them ; inquiring, in the
depth of their souls, for the hidden meaning. According to Aristotle’s dictum,
that Philosophy proceeds from Wonder, the Greek view of Nature also proceeds
from wonder of this kind.
Not that in their experience, Spirit meets something extraordinary, which it
compares with the common order of things; for the intelligent view of a regular
course of Nature, and the reference of phenomena to that standard, do not yet
present themselves; but the Greek Spirit was excited to wonder at the Natural in
Nature. It does not maintain the position of stupid indifference to it as
something existing, and there an end of it; but regards it as something in the
first instance foreign, in which, however, it has a presentiment of confidence,
and the belief that it bears something within it which is friendly to the human
Spirit, and which it may be permitted to sustain a positive relation. This
Wonder, and this Presentiment, are here the fundamental categories ; though the
Hellenes did not content themselves with these moods of feelings, but projected
the hidden meaning, which was the subject of the surmise, into a distinct
conception as an object of consciousness. The Natural holds its place in their
minds only after undergoing some transformation by Spirit – not immediately. Man
regards Nature only as an excitement to his faculties, and only the Spiritual
which he has evolved from it can have any influence over him. Nor is this
commencement of the Spiritual apprehension of Nature to be regarded as an
explanation suggested by us; it meets us in a multitude of conceptions formed by
the Greeks themselves. The position of curious surmise, of attentive eagerness
to catch the meaning of Nature, is indicated to us in the comprehensive idea of
Pan. To the Greeks Pan did not represent the objective Whole, but that
indefinite neutral ground which involves the element of the subjective; he
embodies that thrill which pervades us in the silence of the forests; he was,
therefore, especially worshipped in sylvan Arcadia: (a “panic terror” is the
common expression for a groundless fright). Pan, this thrill-exciting being, is
also represented as playing on the flute; we have not the bare internal
presentiment, for Pan makes himself audible on the seven-reeded pipe. In what
has been stated we have, on the one hand, the Indefinite, which, however, holds
communication with man; on the other hand the fact, that such communication is
only a subjective imagining – an explanation furnished by the percipient
himself. On the same principle the Greeks listened to the murmuring of the
fountains, and asked what might be thereby signified; but the signification
which they were led to attach to it was not the objective meaning of the
fountain, but the subjective – that of the subject itself, which further exalts
the Naiad to a Muse. The Naiads, or Fountains, are the external, objective
origin of the Muses. Yet the immortal songs of the Muses are not that which is
heard in the murmuring of the fountains; they are the productions of the
thoughtfully listening Spirit – creative while observant. The interpretation and
explanation of Nature and its transformations – the indication of their sense
and import – is the act of the subjective Spirit; and to this the Greeks
attached the name manteia. The general idea which this embodies, is the form in
which man realizes his relationship to Nature. Manteia has reference both to the
matter of the exposition and to the expounder who divines the weighty import in
question. Plato speaks of it in reference to dreams, and to that delirium into
which men fall during sickness; an interpreter, mantis, is wanted to explain
these dreams and this delirium. That Nature answered the questions which the
Greek put to her, is in this converse sense true, that he obtained an answer to
the questions of Nature from his own Spirit. The insight of the Seer becomes
thereby purely poetical; Spirit supplies the signification which the natural
image expresses. Everywhere the Greeks desired a clear presentation and
interpretation of the Natural. Homer tells us, in the last book of the Odyssey,
that while the Greeks were overwhelmed with sorrow for Achilles, a violent
agitation came over the sea: the Greeks were on the point of dispersing in
terror, when the experienced Nestor arose and interpreted the phenomenon to
them. Thetis, he said, was coming, with her nymphs, to lament for the death of
her son. When a pestilence broke out in the camp of the Greeks, the Priest
Calchas explained that Apollo was incensed at their not having restored the
daughter of his priest Chryses when a ransom had been offered. The Oracle was
originally interpreted exactly in this way. The oldest Oracle was at Dodona (in
the district of the modern Janina). Herodotus says that the first priestesses of
the temple there, were from Egypt; yet this temple is stated to be an ancient
Greek one. The rustling of the leaves of the sacred oaks was the form of
prognostication there. Bowls of metal were also suspended in the grove. But the
sounds of the bowls dashing against each other were quite indefinite, and had no
objective sense; the sense – the signification – was imparted to the sounds only
by the human beings who heard them. Thus also the Delphic priestesses, in a
senseless, distracted state – in the intoxication of enthusiasm (mantia) –
uttered unintelligible sounds; and it was the manteis who gave to these
utterances a definite meaning. In the cave of Trophonius the noise of
subterranean waters was heard, and apparitions were seen: but these indefinite
phenomena acquired a meaning only through the interpreting, comprehending
Spirit. It must also be observed, that these excitements of Spirit are in the
first instance external, natural impulses. Succeeding them are internal changes
taking place in the human being himself – such as dreams, or the delirium of the
Delphic priestess – which require to be made intelligible by the mantis. At the
commencement of the Iliad, Achilles is excited against Agamemnon, and is on the
point of drawing his sword; but on a sudden he checks the movement of his arm,
and recollects himself in his wrath, reflecting on his relation to Agamemnon.
The Poet explains this by saying that it was Pallas-Athene (Wisdom or
Consideration) that restrained him. When Ulysses among the Phaeacians has thrown
his discus farther than the rest, and one of the Phaeacians shows a friendly
disposition towards him, the Poet recognizes in him Pallas-Athene. Such an
explanation denotes the perception of the inner meaning, the sense, the
underlying truth; and the poets were in this way the teachers of the Greeks –
especially Homer. Manteia in fact is Poesy – not a capricious indulgence of
fancy, but an imagination which introduces the Spiritual into the Natural – in
short a richly intelligent perception. The Greek Spirit, on the whole,
therefore, is free from superstition, since it changes the sensuous into the
sensible – the Intellectual – so that [oracular] decisions are derived from
Spirit; although superstition comes in again from another quarter, as will be
observed when impulsions from another source than the Spiritual, are allowed to
tell upon opinion and action.
But the stimuli that operated on the Spirit of the Greeks are not to be
limited to these objective and subjective excitements. The traditional element
derived from foreign countries, the culture, the divinities and ritual
observances transmitted to them ab extra must also be included. It has been long
a much vexed question whether the arts and the religion of the Greeks were
developed independently or through foreign suggestion. Under the conduct of a
one-sided understanding the controversy is interminable; for it is no less a
fact of history that the Greeks derived conceptions from India, Syria, and
Egypt, than that the Greek conceptions are peculiar to themselves, and those
others alien. Herodotus (II. 53) asserts, with equal decision, that “Homer and
Hesiod invented a Theogony for the Greeks, and assigned to the gods their
appropriate epithets” (a most weighty sentence, which has been the subject of
deep investigation, especially by Creuzer) – and, in another place, that Greece
took the names of its divinities from Egypt, and that the Greeks made inquiry at
Dodona, whether they ought to adopt these names or not. This appears
selfcontradictory: it is, however, quite consistent; for the fact is that the
Greeks evolved the Spiritual from the materials which they had received. The
Natural, as explained by man – i.e., its internal essential element – is, as a
universal principle, the beginning of the Divine. Just as in Art the Greeks may
have acquired a mastery of technical matters from others – from the Egyptians
especially – so in their religion the commencement might have been from without;
but by their independent spirit they transformed the one as well as the other.
Traces of such foreign rudiments may be generally discovered (Creuzer, in his
“Symbolik,” dwells especially on this point). The amours of Zeus appear indeed
as something isolated, extraneous, adventitious, but it may be shown that
foreign theogonic representations form their basis. Hercules is, among the
Hellenes, that Spiritual Humanity which by native energy attains Olympus through
the twelve far-famed labors: but the foreign idea that lies at the basis is the
Sun, completing its revolution through the twelve signs of the Zodiac. The
Mysteries were only such ancient rudiments, and certainly contained no greater
wisdom than already existed in the consciousness of the Greeks. All Athenians
were initiated in the mysteries – Socrates excepted, who refused initiation,
because he knew well that science and art are not the product of mysteries, and
that Wisdom never lies among arcana. True science has its place much rather in
the open field of consciousness.
In summing up the constituents of the Greek Spirit, we find its fundamental
characteristic to be, that the freedom of Spirit is conditioned by and has an
essential relation to some stimulus supplied by Nature. Greek freedom of thought
is excited by an alien existence; but it is free because it transforms and
virtually reproduces the stimulus by its own operation. This phase of Spirit is
the medium between the loss of individuality on the part of man (such as we
observe in the Asiatic principle, in which the Spiritual and Divine exists only
under a Natural form), and Infinite Subjectivity as pure certainty of itself –
the position that the Ego is the ground of all that can lay claim to substantial
existence. The Greek Spirit as the medium between these two, begins with Nature,
but transforms it into a mere objective form of its (Spirit’s) own existence;
Spirituality is therefore not yet absolutely free; not yet absolutely
self-produced – is not self-stimulation. Setting out from surmise and wonder,
the Greek Spirit advances to definite conceptions of the hidden meanings of
Nature. In the subject itself too, the same harmony is produced. In Man, the
side of his subjective existence which he owes to Nature, is the Heart, the
Disposition, Passion, and Variety of Temperament: this side is then developed in
a spiritual direction to free Individuality; so that the character is not placed
in a relation to universally valid moral authorities, assuming the form of
duties, but the Moral appears as a nature peculiar to the individual – an
exertion of will, the result of disposition and individual constitution. This
stamps the Greek character as that of Individuality conditioned by Beauty, which
is produced by Spirit, transforming the merely Natural into an expression of its
own being. The activity of Spirit does not yet possess in itself the material
and organ of expression, but needs the excitement of Nature and the matter which
Nature supplies: it is not free, self-determining Spirituality, but mere
naturalness formed to Spirituality – Spiritual Individuality. The Greek Spirit
is the plastic artist, forming the stone into a work of art. In this formative
process the stone does not remain mere stone – the form being only superinduced
from without; but it is made an expression of the Spiritual, even contrary to
its nature, and thus transformed. Conversely, the artist needs for his spiritual
conceptions, stone, colors, sensuous forms to express his idea. Without such an
element he can no more be conscious of the idea himself, than give it an
objective form for the contemplation of others; since it cannot in Thought alone
become an object to him. The Egyptian Spirit also was a similar laborer in
Matter, but the Natural had not yet been subjected to the Spiritual. No advance
was made beyond a struggle and contest with it; the Natural still took an
independent position, and formed one side of the image, as in the body of the
Sphinx. In Greek Beauty the Sensuous is only a sign, an expression, an envelope,
in which Spirit manifests itself.
It must be added, that while the Greek Spirit is a transforming artist of
this kind, it knows itself free in its productions; for it is their creator, and
they are what is called the “work of man.” They are, however, not merely this,
but Eternal Truth – the energizing of Spirit in its innate essence, and quite as
really not created as created by man. He has a respect and veneration for these
conceptions and images – this Olympian Zeus – this Pallas of the Acropolis – and
in the same way for the laws, political and ethical, that guide his actions. But
He, the human being, is the womb that conceived them, he the breast that suckled
them, he the Spiritual to which their grandeur and purity are owing. Thus he
feels himself calm in contemplating them, and not only free in himself, but
possessing the consciousness of his freedom; thus the honor of the Human is
swallowed up in the worship of the Divine. Men honor the Divine in and for
itself, but at the same time as their deed, their production, their phenomenal
existence; thus the Divine receives its honor through the respect paid to the
Human, and the Human in virtue of the honor paid to the Divine.
Such are the qualities of that Beautiful Individuality, which constitutes the
centre of the Greek character. We must now consider the several radiations which
this idea throws out in realizing itself. All issue in works of art, and we may
arrange under three heads: the subjective work of art, that is, the culture of
the man himself; – the objective work of art, i.e., the shaping of the world of
divinities; – lastly, the political work of art – the form of the Constitution,
and the relations of the Individuals who compose it.
Section II: Phases of Individuality Æsthetically Conditioned
Chapter I. – The Subjective Work of Art
Man with his necessities sustains a practical relation to external Nature, and
in making it satisfy his desires, and thus using it up, has recourse to a system
of means. For natural objects are powerful, and offer resistance in various
ways. In order to subdue them, man introduces other natural agents; thus turns
Nature against itself, and invents instruments for this purpose. These human
inventions belong to Spirit, and such an instrument is to be respected more than
a mere natural object. We see, too, that the Greeks are accustomed to set an
especial value upon them, for in Homer, man’s delight in them appears in a very
striking way. In the notice of Agamemnon’s sceptre, its origin is given in
detail: mention is made of doors which turn on hinges, and of accoutrements and
furniture, in a way that expresses satisfaction. The honor of human invention in
subjugating Nature is ascribed to the gods. But, on the other hand, man uses
Nature for ornament, which is intended only as a token of wealth and of that
which man has made of himself. We find Ornament, in this interest, already very
much developed among the Homeric Greeks. It is true that both barbarians and
civilized nations ornament themselves ; but barbarians content themselves with
mere ornament; they intend their persons to please by an external addition. But
ornament by its very nature is destined only to beautify something other than
itself, viz. the human body, which is man’s immediate environment, and which, in
common with Nature at large, he has to transform. The spiritual interest of
Primary importance is, therefore, the development of the body to a perfect organ
for the Will – an adaptation which may on the one hand itself be the means for
ulterior objects, and on the other hand, appear as an object per se. Among the
Greeks, then, we find this boundless impulse of individuals to display
themselves, and to find their enjoyment in so doing. Sensuous enjoyment does not
become the basis of their condition when a state of repose has been obtained,
any more than the dependence and stupor of superstition which enjoyment entails.
They are too powerfully excited, too much bent upon developing their
individuality, absolutely to adore Nature, as it manifests itself in its aspects
of power and beneficence. That peaceful condition which ensued when a predatory
life had been relinquished, and liberal nature had afforded security and
leisure, turned their energies in the direction of self-assertion – the effort
to dignify themselves. But while on the one side they have too much independent
personality to be subjugated by superstition, that sentiment has not gone to the
extent of making them vain; on the contrary, essential conditions must be first
satisfied, before this can become a matter of vanity with them. The exhilarating
sense of personality, in contrast with sensuous subjection to nature, and the
need, not of mere pleasure, but of the display of individual powers, in order
thereby to gain special distinction and consequent enjoyment, constitute
therefore the chief characteristic and principal occupation of the Greeks. Free
as the bird singing in the sky, the individual only expresses what lies in his
untrammelled human nature – [to give the world “assurance of a man"] – to have
his importance recognized. This is the subjective beginning of Greek Art – in
which the human being elaborates his physical being, in free, beautiful movement
and agile vigor, to a work of art. The Greeks first trained their own persons to
beautiful configurations before they attempted the expression of such in marble
and in paintings. The innocuous contests of games, in which every one exhibits
his powers, is of very ancient date. Homer gives a noble description of the
games conducted by Achilles, in honor of Patroclus; but in all his poems there
is no notice of statues of the gods, though he mentions the sanctuary at Dodona,
and the treasure-house of Apollo at Delphi. The games in Homer consist in
wrestling and boxing, running, horse and chariot races, throwing the discus or
javelin, and archery. With these exercises are united dance and song, to express
and form part of the enjoyment of social exhilaration, and which arts likewise
blossomed into beauty. On the shield of Achilles, Hephaestus represents, among
other things, how beautiful youths and maidens move as quickly “with well-taught
feet,” as the potter turns his wheel. The multitude stand round enjoying the
spectacle; the divine singer accompanies the song with the harp, and two chief
dancers perform their evolutions in the centre of the circle.
These games and aesthetic displays, with the pleasures and honors that
accompanied them, were at the outset only private, originating in particular
occasions; but in the sequel they became an affair of the nation, and were fixed
for certain times at appointed places. Besides the Olympic games in the sacred
district of Elis, there were also held the Isthmian, the Pythian, and Nemean, at
other places.
If we look at the inner nature of these sports, we shall first observe how
Sport itself is opposed to serious business, to dependence and need. This
wrestling, running, contending was no serious affair; bespoke no obligation of
defence, no necessity of combat. Serious occupation is labor that has reference
to some want. I or Nature must succumb; if the one is to continue, the other
must fall. In contrast with this kind of seriousness, however, Sport presents
the higher seriousness; for in it Nature is wrought into Spirit, and although in
these contests the subject has not advanced to the highest grade of serious
thought, yet in this exercise of his physical powers, man shows his Freedom,
viz. that he has transformed his body to an organ of Spirit. Man has immediately
in one of his organs, the Voice, an element which admits and requires a more
extensive purport than the mere sensuous Present. We have seen how Song is
united with the Dance, and ministers to it: but, subsequently Song makes itself
independent, and requires musical instruments to accompany it; it then ceases to
be unmeaning, like the modulations of a bird, which may indeed express emotion,
but which have no objective import; but it requires an import created by
imagination and Spirit, and which is then further formed into an objective work
of art.
Chapter II. – The Objective Work of Art
If the subject of Song as thus developed among the Greeks is made a question, we
should say that its essential and absolute purport is religious. We have
examined the Idea embodied in the Greek Spirit; and Religion is nothing else
than this Idea made objective as the essence of being. According to that Idea,
we shall observe also that the Divine involves the vis natura only as an element
suffering a process of transformation to spiritual power. Of this Natural
Element, as its origin, nothing more remains than the accord of analogy involved
in the representation they formed of Spiritual power; for the Greeks worshipped
God as Spiritual. We cannot, therefore, regard the Greek divinity as similar to
the Indian – some Power of Nature for which the human shape supplies only an
outward form. The essence is the Spiritual itself, and the Natural is only the
point of departure. But on the other hand, it must be observed, that the
divinity of the Greeks is not yet the absolute, free Spirit, but Spirit in a
particular mode, fettered by the limitations of humanity – still dependent as a
determinate individuality on external conditions. Individualities, objectively
beautiful, are the gods of the Greeks. The divine Spirit is here so conditioned
as to be not yet regarded as abstract Spirit, but has a specialized existence –
continues to manifest itself in sense; but so that the sensuous is not its
substance, but is only an element of its manifestation. This must be our leading
idea in the consideration of the Greek mythology, and we must have our attention
fixed upon it so much the more firmly, as – partly through the influence of
erudition, which has whelmed essential principles beneath an infinite amount of
details, and partly through that destructive analysis which is the work of the
abstract Understanding – this mythology, together with the more ancient periods
of Greek history, has become a region of the greatest intellectual confusion.
In the Idea of the Greek Spirit we found the two elements, Nature and Spirit,
in such a relation to each other, that Nature forms merely the point of
departure. This degradation of Nature is in the Greek mythology the turning
point of the whole – expressed as the War of the Gods, the overthrow of the
Titans by the race of Zeus. The transition from the Oriental to the Occidental
Spirit is therein represented, for the Titans are the merely Physical – natural
existences, from whose grasp sovereignty is wrested. It is true that they
continue to be venerated, but not as governing powers; for they are relegated to
the verge [the limbus] of the world. The Titans are powers of Nature, Uranus,
Gaea, Oceanus, Selene, Helios, etc. Chronos expresses the dominion of abstract
Time, which devours its children. The unlimited power of reproduction is
restrained, and Zeus appears as the head of the new divinities, who embody a
spiritual import, and are themselves Spirit.[17] It is not possible to express
this transition more distinctly and naively than in this myth; the new dynasty
of divinities proclaim their peculiar nature to be of a Spiritual order.
The second point is, that the new divinities retain natural elements, and
consequently in themselves a determinate relation to the powers of Nature, as
was previously shown. Zeus has his lightnings and clouds, and Hera is the
creatress of the Natural, the producer of crescent vitality. Zeus is also the
political god, the protector of morals and of hospitality. Oceanus, as such, is
only the element of Nature which his name denotes. Poseidon has still the
wildness of that element in his character; but he is also an ethical personage;
to him is ascribed the building of walls and the production of the Horse. Helios
is the sun as a natural element. This Light, according to the analogy of Spirit,
has been transformed to self-consciousness, and Apollo has proceeded from
Helios. The name lukeios points to the connection with light; Apollo was a
herdsman in the employ of Admetus, but oxen not subjected to the yoke were
sacred to Helios: his rays, represented as arrows, kill the Python. The idea of
Light as the natural power constituting the basis of the representation, cannot
be dissociated from this divinity; especially as the other predicates attached
to it are easily united with it, and the explanations of Müller and others, who
deny that basis, are much more arbitrary and far-fetched. For Apollo is the
prophesying and discerning god – Light, that makes everything clear. He is,
moreover, the healer and strengthener; as also the destroyer, for he kills men.
He is the propitiating and purifying god, e.g., in contravention of the
Eumenides – the ancient subterrene divinities – who exact hard, stern justice.
He himself is pure; he has no wife, but only a sister, and is not involved in
various disgusting adventures, like Zeus; moreover, he is the discerner and
declarer, the singer and leader of the dances – as the sun leads the harmonious
dance of stars. – In like manner the Naiads became the Muses. The mother of the
gods, Cybele – continuing to be worshipped at Ephesus as Artemis – is scarcely
to be recognized as the Artemis of the Greeks – the chaste huntress and
destroyer of wild beasts. Should it be said that this change of the Natural into
the Spiritual is owing to our allegorizing, or that of the later Greeks, we may
reply, that this transformation of the Natural to the Spiritual is the Greek
Spirit itself. The epigrams of the Greeks exhibit such advances from the
Sensuous to the Spiritual. But the abstract Understanding cannot comprehend this
blending of the Natural with the Spiritual.
It must be further observed, that the Greek gods are to be regarded as
individualities – not abstractions, like “Knowledge,” “Unity,” “Time,” “Heaven,”
“Necessity.” Such abstractions do not form the substance of these divinities;
they are no allegories, no abstract beings, to which various attributes are
attached, like the Horatian “Necessitas clavis trabalibus.” As little are the
divinities symbols, for a symbol is only a sign, an adumbration of something
else. The Greek gods express of themselves what they are. The eternal repose and
clear intelligence that dignifies the head of Apollo, is not a symbol, but the
expression in which Spirit manifests itself, and shows itself present. The gods
are personalities, concrete individualities: an allegorical being has no
qualities, but is itself one quality and no more. The gods are, moreover,
special characters, since in each of them one peculiarity predominates as the
characteristic one; but it would be vain to try to bring this circle of
characters into a system. Zeus, perhaps, may be regarded as ruling the other
gods, but not with substantial power; so that they are left free to their own
idiosyncrasy. Since the whole range of spiritual and moral qualities was
appropriated by the gods, the unity, which stood above them all, necessarily
remained abstract ; it was therefore formless and unmeaning Fact, [the absolute
constitution of things] – Necessity, whose oppressive character arises from the
absence of the Spiritual in it; whereas the gods hold a friendly relation to
men, for they are Spiritual natures. That higher thought, the knowledge of Unity
as God – the One Spirit – lay beyond that grade of thought which the Greeks had
attained.
With regard to the adventitious and special that attaches to the Greek gods,
the question arises, where the external origin of this adventitious element is
to be looked for. It arises partly from local characteristics – the scattered
condition of the Greeks at the commencement of their national life, fixing as
this did on certain points, and consequently introducing local representations.
The local divinities stand alone, and occupy a much greater extent than they do
afterwards, when they enter into the circle of the divinities, and are reduced
to a limited position; they are conditioned by the particular consciousness and
circumstances of the countries in which they appear. There are a multitude of
Herculeses and Zeuses, that have their local history like the Indian gods, who
also at different places possess temples to which a peculiar legend attaches. A
similar relation occurs in the case of the Catholic saints and their legends;
though here, not the several localities, but the one “Mater Dei” supplies the
point of departure, being afterwards localized in the most diversified modes.
The Greeks relate the liveliest and most attractive stories of their gods – to
which no limit can be assigned, since rich fancies were always gushing forth
anew in the living Spirit of the Greeks. A second source from which adventitious
specialities in the conception of the gods arose is that Worship of Nature,
whose representations retain a place in the Greek myths, as certainly as they
appear there also in a regenerated and transfigured condition. The preservation
of the original myths, brings us to the famous chapter of the “Mysteries.”
already mentioned. These mysteries of the Greeks present something which, as
unknown, has attracted the curiosity of all times, under the supposition of
profound wisdom. It must first be remarked that their antique and primary
character, in virtue of its very antiquity, shows their destitution of
excellence – their inferiority; – that the more refined truths are not expressed
in these mysteries, and that the view which many have entertained is incorrect,
viz. – that the Unity of God, in opposition to polytheism, was taught in them.
The mysteries were rather antique rituals; and it is as unhistorical as it is
foolish, to assume that profound philosophical truths are to be found here;
since, on the contrary, only natural ideas – ruder conceptions of the
metamorphoses occurring everywhere in nature, and of the vital principle that
pervades it – were the subjects of those mysteries. If we put together all the
historical data pertinent to the question, the result we shall inevitably arrive
at will be that the mysteries did not constitute a system of doctrines, but were
sensuous ceremonies and exhibitions, consisting of symbols of the universal
operations of Nature, as, e.g., the relation of the earth to celestial
phenomena. The chief basis of the representations of Ceres and Proserpine,
Bacchus and his train, was the universal principle of Nature; and the
accompanying details were obscure stories and representations, mainly bearing on
the universal vital force and its metamorphoses. An analogous process to that of
Nature, Spirit has also to undergo; for it must be twice-born, i.e. abnegate
itself; and thus the representations given in the mysteries called attention,
though only feebly, to the nature of Spirit. In the Greeks they produced an
emotion of shuddering awe; for an instinctive dread comes over men, when a
signification is perceived in a form, which as a sensuous phenomenon does not
express that signification, and which therefore both repels and attracts –
awakes surmises by the import that reverberates through the whole, but at the
same time a thrill of dread at the repellent form. Æschylus was accused of
having profaned the mysteries in his tragedies. The indefinite representations
and symbols of the Mysteries, in which the profound import is only surmised, are
an element alien to the clear pure forms, and threaten them with destruction ;
on which account the gods of Art remain separated from the gods of the
Mysteries, and the two spheres must be strictly dissociated. Most of their gods
the Greeks received from foreign lands – as Herodotus states expressly with
regard to Egypt – but these exotic myths were transformed and spiritualized by
the Greeks; and that part of the foreign theogonies which accompanied them, was,
in the mouth of the Hellenes, worked up into a legendary narrative which often
redounded to the disadvantage of the divinities. Thus also the brutes which
continued to rank as gods among the Egyptians, were degraded to external signs,
accompanying the Spiritual god. While they have each an individual character,
the Greek gods are also represented as human, and this anthropomorphism is
charged as a defect. On the contrary (we may immediately rejoin) man as the
Spiritual constitutes the element of truth in the Greek gods, which rendered
them superior to all elemental deities, and all mere abstractions of the One and
Highest Being. On the other side it is alleged as an advantage of the Greek gods
that they are represented as men – that being regarded as not the case with the
Christian God. Schiller says:
“While the gods remained more human,
The men were more divine.”
But the Greek gods must not be regarded as more human than the Christian God.
Christ is much more a Man: he lives, dies – suffers death on the cross – which
is infinitely more human than the humanity of the Greek Idea of the Beautiful.
But in referring to this common element of the Greek and the Christian
religions, it must be said of both, that if a manifestation of God is to be
supposed at all, his natural form must be that of Spirit, which for sensuous
conception is essentially the human; for no other form can lay claim to
spirituality. God appears indeed in the sun, in the mountains, in the trees, in
everything that has life; but a natural appearance of this kind, is not the form
proper to Spirit: here God is cognizable only in the mind of the percipient. If
God himself is to be manifested in a corresponding expression, that can only be
the human form: for from this the Spiritual beams forth. But if it were asked:
Does God necessarily manifest himself? the question must be answered in the
affirmative; for there is no essential existence that does not manifest itself.
The real defect of the Greek religion, as compared with the Christian, is,
therefore, that in the former the manifestation constitutes the highest mode in
which the Divine being is conceived to exist – the sum and substance of
divinity; while in the Christian religion the manifestation is regarded only as
a temporary phase of the Divine. Here the manifested God dies, and elevates
himself to glory; only after death is Christ represented as sitting at the right
hand of God. The Greek god, on the contrary, exists for his worshippers
perennially in the manifestation – only in marble, in metal or wood, or as
figured by the imagination. But why did God not appear to the Greeks in the
flesh? Because man was not duly estimated, did not obtain honor and dignity,
till he had more fully elaborated and developed himself in the attainment of the
Freedom implicit in the aesthetic manifestation in question; the form and
shaping of the divinity therefore continued to be the product of individual
views, [not a general, impersonal one]. One element in Spirit is, that it
produces itself – makes itself what it is: and the other is, that it is
originally free – that Freedom is its nature and its Idea. But the Greeks, since
they had not attained an intellectual conception of themselves, did not yet
realize Spirit in its Universality – had not the idea of man and the essential
unity of the divine and human nature according to the Christian view. Only the
self-reliant, truly subjective Spirit can bear to dispense with the phenomenal
side, and can venture to assign the Divine Nature to Spirit alone. It then no
longer needs to inweave the Natural into its idea of the Spiritual, in order to
hold fast its conception of the Divine, and to have its unity with the Divine,
externally visible; but while free Thought thinks the Phenomenal, it is content
to leave it as it is; for it also thinks that union of the Finite and the
Infinite, and recognizes it not as a mere accidental union, but as the Absolute
– the eternal Idea itself. Since Subjectivity was not comprehended in all its
depth by the Greek Spirit, the true reconciliation was not attained in it, and
the human Spirit did not yet assert its true position. This defect showed itself
in the fact of Fate as pure subjectivity appearing superior to the gods; it also
shows itself in the fact, that men derive their resolves not yet from
themselves, but from their Oracles. Neither human nor divine subjectivity,
recognized as infinite, has as yet, absolutely decisive authority.
Chapter III. – The Political Work of Art
The State unites the two phases just considered, viz., the Subjective and the
Objective Work of Art. In the State, Spirit is not a mere Object, like the
deities, nor, on the other hand, is it merely subjectively developed to a
beautiful physique. It is here a living, universal Spirit, but which is at the
same time the self-conscious Spirit of the individuals composing the community.
The Democratical Constitution alone was adapted to the Spirit and political
condition in question. In the East we recognized Despotism, developed in
magnificent proportions, as a form of government strictly appropriate to the
Dawn-Land of History. Not less adapted is the democratical form in Greece, to
the part assigned to it in the same great drama. In Greece, viz., we have the
freedom of the Individual, but it has not yet advanced to such a degree of
abstraction, that the subjective unit is conscious of direct dependence on the
[general] substantial principle – the State as such. In this grade of Freedom,
the individual will is unfettered in the entire range of its vitality, and
embodies that substantial principle [the bond of the political union], according
to its particular idiosyncrasy. In Rome, on the other hand, we shall observe a
harsh sovereignty dominating over the individual members of the State; as also
in the German Empire, a monarchy, in which the Individual is connected with and
has devoirs to perform not only in regard to the monarch, but to the whole
monarchical organization.
The Democratical State is not Patriarchal – does not rest on a still
unreflecting, undeveloped confidence – but implies laws, with the consciousness
of their being founded on an equitable and moral basis, and the recognition of
these laws as positive. At the time of the Kings, no political life had as yet
made its appearance in Hellas; there are, therefore, only slight traces of
Legislation. But in the interval from the Trojan War till near the time of
Cyrus, its necessity was felt. The first Lawgivers are known under the name of
The Seven Sages – a title which at that time did not imply any such character as
that of the Sophists – teachers of wisdom, designedly [and systematically]
proclaiming the Right and True – but merely thinking men, whose thinking stopped
short of Science, properly so called. They were practical politicians; the good
counsels which two of them – Thales of Miletus and Bias of Priene – gave to the
Ionian cities, have been already mentioned. Thus Solon was commissioned by the
Athenians to give them laws, as those then in operation no longer sufficed.
Solon gave the Athenians a constitution by which all obtained equal rights, yet
not so as to render the Democracy a quite abstract one. The main point in
Democracy is moral disposition. Virtue is the basis of Democracy, remarks
Montesquieu; and this sentiment is as important as it is true in reference to
the idea of Democracy commonly entertained. The Substance, [the Principle] of
Justice, the common weal, the general interest, is the main consideration ; but
it is so only as Custom, in the form of Objective Will, so that morality
properly so called – subjective conviction and intention – has not yet
manifested itself. Law exists, and is in point of substance, the Law of Freedom
– rational [in its form and purport,] and valid because it is Law, i.e., without
ulterior sanction. As in Beauty the Natural element – its sensuous coefficient –
remains, so also in this customary morality, laws assume the form of a necessity
of Nature. The Greeks occupy the middle ground of Beauty and have not yet
attained the higher standpoint of Truth. While Custom and Wont is the form in
which the Right is willed and done, that form is a stable one, and has not yet
admitted into it the foe of [unreflected] immediacy – reflection and
subjectivity of Will. The interests of the community may, therefore, continue to
be intrusted to the will and resolve of the citizens – and this must be the
basis of the Greek constitution; for no principle has as yet manifested itself,
which can contravene such Choice conditioned by Custom, and hinder its realizing
itself in action. The Democratic Constitution is here the only possible one: the
citizens are still unconscious of particular interests, and therefore of a
corrupting element: the Objective Will is in their case not disintegrated.
Athene the goddess is Athens itself – i.e., the real and concrete spirit of the
citizens. The divinity ceases to inspire their life and conduct, only when the
Will has retreated within itself – into the adytum of cognition and conscience –
and has posited the infinite schism between the Subjective and the Objective.
The above is the true position of the Democratic polity; its justification and
absolute necessity rest on this still immanent Objective Morality. For the
modern conceptions of Democracy this justification cannot be pleaded. These
provide that the interests of the community, the affairs of State, shall be
discussed and decided by the People; that the individual members of the
community shall deliberate, urge their respective opinions, and give their
votes; and this on the ground that the interests of the State and its concerns
are the interests of such individual members. All this is very well; but the
essential condition and distinction in regard to various phases of Democracy is:
What is the character of these individual members? They are absolutely
authorized to assume their position, only in as far as their will is still
Objective Will – not one that wishes this or that, not mere “good” will. For
good will is something particular – rests on the morality of individuals, on
their conviction and subjective feeling. That very subjective Freedom which
constitutes the principle and determines the peculiar form of Freedom in our
world – which forms the absolute basis of our political and religious life,
could not manifest itself in Greece otherwise than as a destructive element.
Subjectivity was a grade not greatly in advance of that occupied by the Greek
Spirit; that phase must of necessity soon be attained: but it plunged the Greek
world into ruin, for the polity which that world embodied was not calculated for
this side of humanity – did not recognize this phase; since it had not made its
appearance when that polity began to exist. Of the Greeks in the first and
genuine form of their Freedom, we may assert, that they had no conscience; the
habit of living for their country without further [analysis or] reflection, was
the principle dominant among them. The consideration of the State in the
abstract – which to our understanding is the essential point – was alien to
them. Their grand object was their country in its living and real aspect; – this
actual Athens, this Sparta, these Temples, these Altars, this form of social
life, this union of fellow-citizens, these manners and customs. To the Greek his
country was a necessary of life, without which existence was impossible. It was
the Sophists – the “Teachers of Wisdom” – who first introduced subjective
reflection, and the new doctrine that each man should act according to his own
conviction. When reflection once comes into play, the inquiry is started whether
the Principles of Law (das Recht) cannot be improved. Instead of holding by the
existing state of things, internal conviction is relied upon; and thus begins a
subjective independent Freedom, in which the individual finds himself in a
position to bring everything to the test of his own conscience, even in defiance
of the existing constitution. Each one has his “principles,” and that view which
accords with his private judgment he regards as practically the best, and as
claiming practical realization. This decay even Thucydides notices, when he
speaks of every one’s thinking that things are going on badly when he has not a
hand in the management.
To this state of things – in which every one presumes to have a judgment of
his own – confidence in Great Men is antagonistic. When, in earlier times, the
Athenians commission Solon to legislate for them, or when Lycurgus appears at
Sparta as lawgiver and regulator of the State, it is evidently not supposed that
the people in general think that they know best what is politically right. At a
later time also, it was distinguished personages of plastic genius in whom the
people placed their confidence : Cleisthenes, e.g., who made the constitution
still more democratic than it had been – Miltiades, Themistocles, Aristides, and
Cimon, who in the Median wars stand at the head of Athenian affairs – and
Pericles, in whom Athenian glory centres as in its focus. But as soon as any of
these great men had performed what was needed, envy intruded – i.e. the recoil
of the sentiment of equality against conspicuous talent – and he was either
imprisoned or exiled. Finally, the Sycophants arose among the people, aspersing
all individual greatness, and reviling those who took the lead in public
affairs.
But there are three other points in the condition of the Greek republics that
must be particularly observed.
1. With Democracy in that form in which alone it existed in Greece, Oracles
are intimately connected. To an independent resolve, a consolidated Subjectivity
of the Will (in which the latter is determined by preponderating reasons) is
absolutely indispensable; but the Greeks had not this element of strength and
vigor in their volition. When a colony was to be founded, when it was proposed
to adopt the worship of foreign deities, or when a general was about to give
battle to the enemy, the oracles were consulted. Before the battle of Plataea,
Pausanias took care that an augury should be taken from the animals offered in
sacrifice, and was informed by the soothsayer Tisam-enus that the sacrifices
were favorable to the Greeks provided they remained on the hither side of the
Asopus, but the contrary, if they crossed the stream and began the battle.
Pausanias, therefore, awaited the attack. In their private affairs, too, the
Greeks came to a determination not so much from subjective conviction as from
some extraneous suggestion. With the advance of democracy we observe the oracles
no longer consulted on the most important matters, but the particular views of
popular orators influencing and deciding the policy of the State. As at this
time Socrates relied upon his “Daemon,” so the popular leaders and the people
relied on their individual convictions in forming their decisions. But
contemporaneously with this were introduced corruption, disorder, and an
unintermitted process of change in the constitution.
2. Another circumstance that demands special attention here, is the element
of Slavery. This was a necessary condition of an aesthetic democracy, where it
was the right and duty of every citizen to deliver or to listen to orations
respecting the management of the State in the place of public assembly, to take
part in the exercise of the Gymnasia, and to join in the celebration of
festivals. It was a necessary condition of such occupations, that the citizens
should be freed from handicraft occupations; consequently, that what among us is
performed by free citizens – the work of daily life – should be done by slaves.
Slavery does not cease until the Will has been infinitely self-reflected[18] –
until Right is conceived as appertaining to every freeman, and the term freeman
is regarded as a synonym for man in his generic nature as endowed with Reason.
But here we still occupy the standpoint of Morality as mere Wont and Custom, and
therefore known only as a peculiarity attaching to a certain kind of existence
[not as absolute and universal Law].
3. It must also be remarked, thirdly, that such democratic constitutions are
possible only in small states – states which do not much exceed the compass of
cities. The whole Polis of the Athenians is united in the one city of Athens.
Tradition tells that Theseus united the scattered Demes into an integral
totality. In the time of Pericles, at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War,
when the Spartans were marching upon Attica, its entire population took refuge
in the city. Only in such cities can the interests of all be similar; in large
empires, on the contrary, diverse and conflicting interests are sure to present
themselves. The living together in one city, the fact that the inhabitants see
each other daily, render a common culture and a living democratic polity
possible. In Democracy, the main point is that the character of the citizen be
plastic, all “of a piece.” He must be present at the critical stages of public
business ; he must take part in decisive crises with his entire personality –
not with his vote merely; he must mingle in the heat of action – the passion and
interest of the whole man being absorbed in the affair, and the warmth with
which a resolve was made being equally ardent during its execution. That unity
of opinion to which the whole community must be brought [when any political step
is to be taken,] must be produced in the individual members of the state by
oratorical suasion. If this were attempted by writing – in an abstract, lifeless
way – no general fervor would be excited among the social units; and the greater
the number, the less weight would each individual vote have. In a large empire a
general inquiry might be made, votes might be gathered in the several
communities, and the results reckoned up – as was done by the French Convention.
But a political existence of this kind is destitute of life, and the World is
ipso facto broken into fragments and dissipated into a mere Paper-world. In the
French Revolution, therefore, the republican constitution never actually became
a Democracy: Tyranny, Despotism, raised its voice under the mask of Freedom and
Equality.
We come now to the Second Period of Greek History. The first period saw the
Greek Spirit attain its aesthetic development and reach maturity – realize its
essential being. The second shows it manifesting itself – exhibits it in its
full glory as producing a work for the world, asserting its principle in the
struggle with an antagonistic force, and triumphantly maintaining it against
that attack.
The Wars with the Persians
The period of contact with the preceding World-Historical people, is generally
to be regarded as the second in the history of any nation. The World-Historical
contact of the Greeks was with the Persians; in that, Greece exhibited itself in
its most glorious aspect. The occasion of the Median wars was the revolt of the
Ionian cities against the Persians, in which the Athenians and Eretrians
assisted them. That which, in particular, induced the Athenians to take their
part, was the circumstance that the son of Pisistratus, after his attempts to
regain sovereignty in Athens had failed in Greece, had betaken himself to the
King of the Persians. The Father of History has given us a brilliant description
of these Median wars, and for the object we are now pursuing we need not
dwelling upon them.
At the beginning of the Median wars, Lacedaemon was in possession of the
Hegemony, partly as the result of having subjugated and enslaved the free nation
of the Messenians, partly because it had assisted many Greek states to expel
their Tyrants. Provoked by the part the Greeks had taken in assisting the
Ionians against him, the Persian King sent heralds to the Greek cities to
require them to give Water and Earth, i.e. to acknowledge his supremacy. The
Persian envoys were contemptuously sent back, and the Lacedaemonians went so far
as to throw them into a well – a deed, however, of which they afterwards so
deeply repented, as to send two Lacedaemonians to Susa in expiation. The Persian
King then despatched an army to invade Greece. With its vastly superior force
the Athenians and Plataeans, without aid from their compatriots, contended at
Marathon under Miltiades, and gained the victory. Afterwards, Xerxes came down
upon Greece with his enormous masses of nations (Herodotus gives a detailed
description of this expedition); and with the terrible array of land-forces was
associated the not less formidable fleet. Thrace, Macedon, and Thessaly were
soon subjugated; but the entrance into Greece Proper – the Pass of Thermopylae –
was defended by three hundred Spartans and seven hundred Thespians, whose fate
is well known. Athens, voluntarily deserted by its inhabitants, was ravaged; the
images of the gods which it contained were “an abomination” to the Persians, who
worshipped the Amorphous, the Unformed. In spite of the disunion of the Greeks,
the Persian fleet was beaten at Salamis; and this glorious battle-day presents
the three greatest tragedians of Greece in remarkable chronological association:
for Æschylus was one of the combatants, and helped to gain the victory,
Sophocles danced at the festival that celebrated it, and on the same day
Euripides was born. The host that remained in Greece, under the command of
Mardonius, was beaten at Plataea by Pausanias, and the Persian power was
consequently broken at various points.
Thus was Greece freed from the pressure which threatened to overwhelm it.
Greater battles, unquestionably, have been fought; but these live immortal not
in the historical records of Nations only, but also of Science and of Art – of
the Noble and the Moral generally. For these are World-Historical victories;
they were the salvation of culture and Spiritual vigor, and they rendered the
Asiatic principle powerless. How often, on other occasions, have not men
sacrificed everything for one grand object! How often have not warriors fallen
for Duty and Country! But here we are called to admire not only valor, genius
and spirit, but the purport of the contest – the effect, the result, which are
unique in their kind. In all other battles a particular interest is predominant;
but the immortal fame of the Greeks is none other than their due, in
consideration of the noble cause for which deliverance was achieved. In the
history of the world it is not the formal [subjective and individual] valor that
has been displayed, not the so-called merit of the combatants, but the
importance of the cause itself, that must decide the fame of the achievement. In
the case before us, the interest of the World’s History hung trembling in the
balance. Oriental despotism – a world united under one lord and sovereign – on
the one side, and separate states – insignificant in extent and resources, but
animated by free individuality – on the other side, stood front to front in
array of battle. Never in History has the superiority of spiritual power over
material bulk – and that of no contemptible amount – been made so gloriously
manifest. This war, and the subsequent development of the states which took the
lead in it, is the most brilliant period of Greece. Everything which the Greek
principle involved, then reached its perfect bloom and came into the light of
day.
The Athenians continued their wars of conquest for a considerable time, and
thereby attained a high degree of prosperity; while the Lacedaemonians, who had
no naval power, remained quiet. The antagonism of Athens and Sparta now
commences – a favorite theme for historical treatment. It may be asserted that
it is an idle inquiry, which of these two states justly claims the superiority,
and that the endeavor should rather be, to exhibit each as in its own department
a necessary and worthy phase of the Greek Spirit. On Sparta’s behalf, e.g., many
categories may be referred to in which she displays excellence; strictness in
point of morals, subjection to discipline, etc., may be advantageously cited.
But the leading principle that characterizes this state is Political Virtue,
which Athens and Sparta have, indeed, in common, but which in the one state
developed itself to a work of Art, viz., Free Individuality – in the other
retained its substantial form. Before we speak of the Pelopon-nesian War, in
which the jealousy of Sparta and Athens broke out into a flame, we must exhibit
more specifically the fundamental character of the two states – their
distinctions in a political and moral respect.
Athens
We have already become acquainted with Athens as an asylum for the inhabitants
of the other districts of Greece, in which a very mixed population was
congregated. The various branches of human industry – agriculture, handicraft,
and trade (especially by sea) – were united in Athens, but gave occasion to much
dissension. An antagonism had early arisen between ancient and wealthy families
and such as were poorer. Three parties, whose distinction had been grounded on
their local position and the mode of life which that position suggested were
then fully recognized. These were, the Pediaeans – inhabitants of the plain, the
rich and aristocratic; the Diacrians – mountaineers, cultivators of the vine and
olive, and herdsmen, who were the most numerous class; and between the two [in
political status and sentiment] the Paralians – inhabitants of the coast, the
moderate party. The polity of the state was wavering between Aristocracy and
Democracy. Solon effected, by his division into four property-classes, a medium
between these opposites. All these together formed the popular assembly for
deliberation and decision on public affairs; but the offices of government were
reserved for the three superior classes. It is remarkable that even while Solon
was still living and actually present, and in spite of his opposition,
Pisistratus acquired supremacy. The constitution had, as it were, not yet
entered into the blood and life of the community; it had not yet become the
habit of moral and civil existence. But it is still more remarkable that
Pisistratus introduced no legislative changes, and that he presented himself
before the Areopagus to answer an accusation brought against him. The rule of
Pisistratus and of his sons appears to have been needed for repressing the power
of great families and factions – for accustoming them to order and peace, and
the citizens generally, on the other hand, to the Solonian legislation. This
being accomplished, that rule was necessarily regarded as superfluous, and the
principles of a free code enter into conflict with the power of the
Pisistratidae. The Pisistratidae were expelled, Hipparchus killed, and Hippias
banished. Then factions were revived; the Alcmaeonidas, who took the lead in the
insurrection, favored Democracy; on the other hand, the Spartans aided the
adverse party of Isagoras, which followed the aristocratic direction. The
Alcmaeonidae, with Cleisthenes at their head, kept the upper hand. This leader
made the constitution still more democratic than it had been; the pulai, of
which hitherto there had been only four, were increased to ten, and this had the
effect of diminishing the influence of the clans. Lastly, Pericles rendered the
constitution yet more democratic by diminishing the essential dignity of the
Areopagus, and bringing causes that had hitherto belonged to it, before the
Demos and the [ordinary] tribunals.
Pericles was a statesman of plastic[19] antique character: when he devoted
himself to public life, he renounced private life, withdrew from all feasts and
banquets, and pursued without intermission his aim of being useful to the state
– a course of conduct by which he attained such an exalted position, that
Aristophanes calls him the Zeus of Athens. We cannot but admire him in the
highest degree: he stood at the head of a light-minded but highly refined and
cultivated people; the only means by which he could obtain influence and
authority over them, was his personal character and the impression he produced
of his being a thoroughly noble man, exclusively intent upon the weal of the
State, and of superiority to his fellow-citizens in native genius and acquired
knowledge. In force of individual character no statesman can be compared with
him.
As a general principle, the Democratic Constitution affords the widest scope
for the development of great political characters ; for it excels all others in
virtue of the fact that it not only allows of the display of their powers on the
part of individuals, but summons them to use those powers for the general weal.
At the same time, no member of the community can obtain influence unless he has
the power of satisfying the intellect and judgment, as well as the passions and
volatility of a cultivated people. In Athens a vital freedom existed, and a
vital equality of manners and mental culture; and if inequality of property
could not be avoided, it nevertheless did not reach an extreme. Together with
this equality, and within the compass of this freedom, all diversities of
character and talent, and all variety of idiosyncrasy could assert themselves in
the most unrestrained manner, and find the most abundant stimulus to development
in its environment ; for the predominant elements of Athenian existence were the
independence of the social units, and a culture animated by the Spirit of
Beauty. It was Pericles who originated the production of those eternal monuments
of sculpture whose scanty remains astonish posterity; it was before this people
that the dramas of Æschylus and Sophocles were performed; and later on those of
Euripides – which, however, do not exhibit the same plastic moral character, and
in which the principle of corruption is more manifest. To this people were
addressed the orations of Pericles: from it sprung a band of men whose genius
has become classical for all centuries; for to this number belong,” besides
those already named, Thucydides, Socrates, Plato, and Aristophanes – the last of
whom preserved entire the political seriousness of his people at the time when
it was being corrupted; and who, imbued with this seriousness, wrote and
dramatized with a view to his country’s weal. We recognize in the Athenians
great industry, susceptibility to excitement, and development of individuality
within the sphere of Spirit conditioned by the morality of Custom. The blame
with which we find them visited in Xenophon and Plato, attaches rather to that
later period when misfortune and the corruption of the democracy had already
supervened. But if we would have the verdict of the Ancients on the political
life of Athens, we must turn, not to Xenophon, nor even to Plato, but to those
who had a thorough acquaintance with the state in its full vigor – who managed
its affairs and have been esteemed its greatest leaders – i.e., to its
Statesmen. Among these, Pericles is the Zeus of the human Pantheon of Athens.
Thucydides puts into his mouth the most profound description of Athenian life,
on the occasion of the funeral obsequies of the warriors who fell in the second
year of the Peloponnesian War. He proposes to show for what a city and in
support of what interests they had died; and this leads the speaker directly to
the essential elements of the Athenian community. He goes on to paint the
character of Athens, and what he says is most profoundly thoughtful, as well as
most just and true. “We love the beautiful,” he says, “but without ostentation
or extravagance; we philosophize without being seduced thereby into effeminacy
and inactivity (for when men give themselves up to Thought, they get further and
further from the Practical – from activity for the public, for the common weal).
We are bold and daring; but this courageous energy in action does not prevent us
from giving ourselves an account of what we undertake (we have a clear
consciousness respecting it); among other nations, on the contrary, martial
daring has its basis in deficiency of culture: we know best how to distinguish
between the agreeable and the irksome; notwithstanding which, we do not shrink
from perils.”
Thus Athens exhibited the spectacle of a state whose existence was
essentially directed to realizing the Beautiful, which had a thoroughly
cultivated consciousness respecting the serious side of public affairs and the
interests of Man’s Spirit and Life, and united with that consciousness, hardy
courage and practical ability.
Sparta
Here we witness on the other hand rigid abstract virtue – a life devoted to the
State, but in which the activity and freedom of individuality are put in the
background. The polity of Sparta is based on institutions which do full justice
to the interest of the State, but whose object is a lifeless equality – not free
movement. The very first steps in Spartan History are very different from the
early stages of Athenian development. The Spartans were Dorians – the Athenians,
Ionians; and this national distinction has an influence on their Constitution
also. In reference to the mode in which the Spartan State originated, we observe
that the Dorians invaded the Peloponnesus with the Heracleidas, subdued the
indigenous tribes, and condemned them to slavery; for the Helots were doubtless
aborigines. The fate that had befallen the Helots was suffered at a later epoch
by the Messenians; for inhuman severity of this order was innate in Spartan
character. While the Athenians had a family-life, and slaves among them were
inmates of the house, the relation of the Spartans to the subjugated race was
one of even greater harshness than that of the Turks to the Greeks; a state of
warfare was constantly kept up in Lacedaemon. In entering upon office, the
Ephors made an unreserved declaration of war against the Helots, and the latter
were habitually given up to the younger Spartans to be practised upon in their
martial exercises. The Helots were on some occasions set free, and fought
against the enemy; moreover, they displayed extraordinary valor in the ranks of
the Spartans; but on their return they were butchered in the most cowardly and
insidious way. As in a slave-ship the crew are constantly armed, and the
greatest care is taken to prevent an insurrection, so the Spartans exercised a
constant vigilance over the Helots, and were always in a condition of war, as
against enemies.
Property in land was divided, even according to the constitution of Lycurgus
(as Plutarch relates), into equal parts, of which 9,000 only belonged to the
Spartans – i.e., the inhabitants of the city – and 30,000 to the Lacedaemonians
or Period. At the same time it was appointed, in order to maintain this
equality, that the portions of ground should not be sold. But how little such an
institution avails to effect its object, is proved by the fact, that in the
sequel Lacedaemon owed its ruin chiefly to the inequality of possessions. As
daughters were capable of inheriting, many estates had come by marriage into the
possession of a few families, and at last all the landed property was in the
hands of a limited number; as if to show how foolish it is to attempt a forced
equality – an attempt which, while ineffective in realizing its professed
object, is also destructive of a most essential point of liberty – the free
disposition of property. Another remarkable feature in the legislation of
Lycurgus, is his forbidding all money except that made of iron – an enactment
which necessitated the abolition of all foreign business and traffic. The
Spartans moreover had no naval force – a force indispensable to the support and
furtherance of commerce; and on occasions when such a force was required, they
had to apply to the Persians for it.
It was with an especial view to promote similarity of manners, and a more
intimate acquaintance of the citizens with each other, that the Spartans had
meals in common – a community, however, which disparaged family life; for eating
and drinking is a private affair, and consequently belongs to domestic
retirement. It was so regarded among the Athenians; with them association was
not material but spiritual, and even their banquets, as we see from Xenophon and
Plato, had an intellectual tone. Among the Spartans, on the other hand, the
costs of the common meal were met by the contributions of the several members,
and he who was too poor to offer such a contribution was consequently excluded.
As to the Political Constitution of Sparta, its basis may be called
democratic, but with considerable modifications which rendered it almost an
Aristocracy and Oligarchy. At the head of the State were two Kings, at whose
side was a Senate (gerousia), chosen from the best men of the State, and which
also performed the functions of a court of justice – deciding rather in
accordance with moral and legal customs, than with written laws.[20] The
gerousia also the highest State-Council – the Council of the Kings, regulating
the most important affairs. Lastly, one of the highest magistracies was that of
the Ephors, respecting whose election we have no definite information; Aristotle
says that the mode of choice was exceedingly childish. We learn from Aristotle
that even persons without nobility or property could attain this dignity. The
Ephors had full authority to convoke popular assemblies, to put resolutions to
the vote, and to propose laws, almost in the same way as the tribuni plebis in
Rome. Their power became tyrannical, like that which Robespierre and his party
exercised for a time in France.
While the Lacedaemonians directed their entire attention to the State,
Intellectual Culture – Art and Science – was not domiciled among them. The
Spartans appeared to the rest of the Greeks, stiff, coarse, awkward beings, who
could not transact business involving any degree of intricacy, or at least
performed it very clumsily. Thucydides makes the Athenians say to the Spartans:
“You have laws and customs which have nothing in common with others; and besides
this, you proceed, when you go into other countries, neither in accordance with
these, nor with the traditionary usages of Hellas.” In their intercourse at
home, they were, on the whole, honorable; but as regarded their conduct towards
other nations, they themselves plainly declared that they held their own good
pleasure for the Commendable, and what was advantageous for the Right. It is
well known that in Sparta (as was also the case in Egypt) the taking away of the
necessaries of life, under certain conditions, was permitted; only the thief
must not allow himself to be discovered. Thus the two States, Athens and Sparta,
stand in contrast with each other. The morality of the latter is rigidly
directed to the maintenance of the State; in the former we find a similar
ethical relation, but with a cultivated consciousness, and boundless activity in
the production of the Beautiful – subsequently, of the True also. This Greek
morality, though extremely beautiful, attractive and interesting in its
manifestation, is not the highest point of view for Spiritual
self-consciousness. It wants the form of Infinity, the reflection of thought
within itself, the emancipation from the Natural element – (the Sensuous that
lurks in the character of Beauty and Divinity [as comprehended by the Greeks]) –
and from that immediacy, [that undeveloped simplicity,] which attaches to their
ethics. Self- Comprehension on the part of Thought is wanting – illimitable
Self-Consciousness – demanding, that what is regarded by me as Right and
Morality should have its confirmation in myself – from the testimony of my own
Spirit; that the Beautiful (the Idea as manifested in sensuous contemplation or
conception) may also become the True – an inner, supersensuous world. The
standpoint occupied by the Æsthetic Spiritual Unity which we have just
described, could not long be the resting-place of Spirit; and the element in
which further advance and corruption originated, was that of Subjectivity –
inward morality, individual reflection, and an inner life generally. The perfect
bloom of Greek life lasted only about sixty years – from the Median wars, B.C.
492, to the Peloponnesian War, B.C. 431. The principle of subjective morality
which was inevitably introduced, became the germ of corruption, which, however,
showed itself in a different form in Athens from that which it assumed in
Sparta: in Athens, as levity in public conduct, in Sparta, as private
depravation of morals. In their fall, the Athenians showed themselves not only
amiable, but great and noble – to such a degree that we cannot but lament it;
among the Spartans, on the contrary, the principle of subjectivity develops
itself in vulgar greed, and issues in vulgar ruin.
The Peloponnesian War
The principle of corruption displayed itself first in the external political
development – in the contest of the states of Greece with each other, and the
struggle of factions within the cities themselves. The Greek Morality had made
Hellas unfit to form one common state; for the dissociation of small states from
each other, and the concentration in cities, where the interest and the
spiritual culture pervading the whole, could be identical, was the necessary
condition of that grade of Freedom which the Greeks occupied. It was only a
momentary combination that occurred in the Trojan War, and even in the Median
wars a union could not be accomplished. Although the tendency towards such a
union is discoverable, the bond was but weak, its permanence was always
endangered by jealousy, and the contest for the Hegemony set the States at
variance with each other. A general outbreak of hostilities in the Peloponnesian
War was the consummation. Before it, and even at its commencement, Pericles was
at the head of the Athenian nation – that people most jealous of its liberty; it
was only his elevated personality and great genius that enabled him to maintain
his position. After the wars with the Medes, Athens enjoyed the Hegemony; a
number of allies – partly islands, partly towns – were obliged to contribute to
the supplies required for continuing the war against the Persians; and instead
of the contribution being made in the form of fleets or troops, the subsidy was
paid in money. Thereby an immense power was concentrated in Athens; a part of
the money was expended in great architectural works, in the enjoyment of which,
since they were products of Spirit, the allies had some share. But that Pericles
did not devote the whole of the money to works of Art, but also made provision
for the Demos in other ways, was evident after his death, from the quantity of
stores amassed in several magazines, but especially in the naval arsenal.
Xenophon says: “Who does not stand in need of Athens? Is she not indispensable
to all lands that are rich in corn and herds, in oil and wine – to all who wish
to traffic either in money or in mind? – to craftsmen, sophists, philosophers,
poets, and all who desire what is worth seeing or hearing in sacred and public
matters?”
In the Peloponnesian War, the struggle was essentially between Athens and
Sparta. Thucydides has left us the history of the greater part of it, and his
immortal work is the absolute gain which humanity has derived from that contest.
Athens allowed herself to be hurried into the extravagant projects of
Alcibiades; and when these had already much weakened her, she was compelled to
succumb to the Spartans, who were guilty of the treachery of applying for aid to
Persia, and who obtained from the King supplies of money and a naval force. They
were also guilty of a still more extensive treason, in abolishing democracy in
Athens and in the cities of Greece generally, and in giving a preponderance to
factions that desired oligarchy, but were not strong enough to maintain
themselves without foreign assistance. Lastly, in the peace of Antalcidas,
Sparta put the finishing stroke to her treachery, by giving over the Greek
cities in Asia Minor to Persian dominion.
Lacedaemon had therefore, both by the oligarchies which it had set up in
various countries, and by the garrisons which it maintained in some cities – as,
e.g., Thebes – obtained a great preponderance in Greece. But the Greek states
were far more incensed at Spartan oppression than they had previously been at
Athenian supremacy. With Thebes at their head, they cast off the yoke, and the
Thebans became for a moment the most distinguished people in Hellas. But it was
to two distinguished men among its citizens that Thebes owed its entire power –
Pelopidas and Epaminondas; as for the most part in that state we find the
Subjective preponderant. In accordance with this principle, Lyrical Poetry –
that which is the expression of subjectivity – especially flourished there; a
kind of subjective amenity of nature shows itself also in the so- called Sacred
Legion which formed the kernel of the Theban host, and was regarded as
consisting of persons connected by amatory bonds [amantes and amati]; while the
influence of subjectivity among them was especially proved by the fact, that
after the death of Epaminondas, Thebes fell back into its former position.
Weakened and distracted, Greece could no longer find safety in itself, and
needed an authoritative prop. In the towns there were incessant contests; the
citizens were divided into factions, as in the Italian cities of the Middle
Ages. The victory of one party entailed the banishment of the other; the latter
then usually applied to the enemies of their native city, to obtain their aid in
subjugating it by force of arms. The various States could no longer co-exist
peaceably: they prepared ruin for each other, as well as for themselves.
We have, then, now to investigate the corruption of the Greek world in its
profounder import, and may denote the principle of that corruption as
subjectivity obtaining emancipation for itself. We see Subjectivity obtruding
itself in various ways. Thought – the subjectively Universal – menaces the
beautiful religion of Greece, while the passions of individuals and their
caprice menace its political constitution. In short, Subjectivity, comprehending
and manifesting itself, threatens the existing state of things in every
department – characterized as that state of things is by Immediacy [a primitive,
unreflecting simplicity]. Thought, therefore, appears here as the principle of
decay – decay, viz. of Substantial [prescriptive] morality; for it introduces an
antithesis, and asserts essentially rational principles. In the Oriental states,
in which there is no such antithesis, moral freedom cannot be realized, since
the highest principle is [Pure] Abstraction. But when Thought recognizes its
positive character, as in Greece, it establishes principles; and these bear to
the real world the relation of Essence to Form. For the concrete vitality found
among the Greeks, is Customary Morality – a life for Religion, for the State,
without further reflection, and without analysis leading to abstract
definitions, which must lead away from the concrete embodiment of them, and
occupy an antithetical position to that embodiment. Law is part of the existing
state of things, with Spirit implicit in it. But as soon as Thought arises, it
investigates the various political constitutions: as the result of its
investigation it forms for itself an idea of an improved state of society, and
demands that this ideal should take the place of things as they are.
In the principle of Greek Freedom, inasmuch as it is Freedom, is involved the
self-emancipation of Thought. We observed the dawn of Thought in the circle of
men mentioned above under their well-known appellation of the Seven Sages. It
was they who first uttered general propositions; though at that time wisdom
consisted rather in a concrete insight [into things, than in the power of
abstract conception]. Parallel with the advance in the development of Religious
Art and with political growth, we find a progressive strengthening of Thought,
its enemy and destroyer; and at the time of the Peloponnesian War science was
already developed. With the Sophists began the process of reflection on the
existing state of things, and of ratiocination. That very diligence and activity
which we observed among the Greeks in their practical life, and in the
achievement of works of art, showed itself also in the turns and windings which
these ideas took ; so that, as material things are changed, worked up and used
for other than their original purposes, similarly the essential being of Spirit
– what is thought and known – is variously handled; it is made an object about
which the mind can employ itself, and this occupation becomes an interest in and
for itself. The movement of Thought – that which goes on within its sphere
[without reference to an extrinsic object] – a process which had formerly no
interest – acquires attractiveness on its own account. The cultivated Sophists,
who were not erudite or scientific men, but masters of subtle turns of thought,
excited the admiration of the Greeks. For all questions they had an answer; for
all interests of a political or religious order they had general points of view;
and in the ultimate development of their art, they claimed the ability to prove
everything, to discover a justifiable side in every position. In a democracy it
is a matter of the first importance, to be able to speak in popular assemblies –
to urge one’s opinions on public matters. Now this demands the power of duly
presenting before them that point of view which we desire them to regard as
essential. For such a purpose, intellectual culture is needed, and this
discipline the Greeks acquired under their Sophists. This mental culture then
became the means, in the hands of those who possessed it, of enforcing their
views and interests on the Demos: the expert Sophist knew how to turn the
subject of discussion this way or that way at pleasure, and thus the doors were
thrown wide open to all human passions. A leading principle of the Sophists was,
that “Man is the measure of all things”; but in this, as in all their
apophthegms, lurks an ambiguity, since the term “Man” may denote Spirit in its
depth and truth, or in the aspect of mere caprice and private interest. The
Sophists meant Man simply as subjective, and intended in this dictum of theirs,
that mere liking was the principle of Right, and that advantage to the
individual was the ground of final appeal. This Sophistic principle appears
again and again, though under different forms, in various periods of History;
thus even in our own times subjective opinion of what is right – mere feeling –
is made the ultimate ground of decision.
In Beauty, as the Greek principle, there was a concrete unity of Spirit,
united with Reality, with Country and Family, etc. In this unity no fixed point
of view had as yet been adopted within the Spirit itself, and Thought, as far as
it transcended this unity, was still swayed by mere liking; [the Beautiful, the
Becoming (to prepou) conducted men in the path of moral propriety, but apart
from this they had no firm abstract principle of Truth and Virtue]. But
Anaxagoras himself had taught, that Thought itself was the absolute Essence of
the World. And it was in Socrates, that at the beginning of the Peloponnesian
War, the principle of subjectivity – of the absolute inherent independence of
Thought – attained free expression. He taught that man has to discover and
recognize in himself what is the Right and Good, and that this Right and Good is
in its nature universal. Socrates is celebrated as a Teacher of Morality, but we
should rather call him the Inventor of Morality. The Greeks had a customary
morality; but Socrates undertook to teach them what moral virtues, duties, etc.
were. The moral man is not he who merely wills and does that which is right –
not the merely innocent man – but he who has the consciousness of what he is
doing. Socrates – in assigning to insight, to conviction, the determination of
men’s actions – posited the Individual as capable of a final moral decision, in
contraposition to Country and to Customary Morality, and thus made himself an
Oracle, in the Greek sense. He said that he had a daimonion within him, which
counselled him what to do, and revealed to him what was advantageous to his
friends. The rise of the inner world of Subjectivity was the rupture with the
existing Reality. Though Socrates himself continued to perform his duties as a
citizen, it was not the actual State and its religion, but the world of Thought
that was his true home. Now the question of the existence and nature of the gods
came to be discussed. The disciple of Socrates, Plato, banished from his ideal
state, Homer and Hesiod, the originators of that mode of conceiving of religious
objects which prevailed among the Greeks; for he desiderated a higher conception
of what was to be reverenced as divine – one more in harmony with Thought. Many
citizens now seceded from practical and political life, to live in the ideal
world. The principle of Socrates manifests a revolutionary aspects towards the
Athenian State; for the peculiarity of this State was, that Customary Morality
was the form in which its existence was moulded, viz. – an inseparable
connection of Thought with actual life. When Socrates wishes to induce his
friends to reflection, the discourse has always a negative tone; he brings them
to the consciousness that they do not know what the Right is. But when on
account of the giving utterance to that principle which was advancing to
recognition, Socrates is condemned to death, the sentence bears on the one hand
the aspect of unimpeachable rectitude – inasmuch as the Athenian people condemns
its deadliest foe – but on the other hand, that of a deeply tragical character,
inasmuch as the Athenians had to make the discovery, that what they reprobated
in Socrates had already struck firm root among themselves, and that they must be
pronounced guilty or innocent with him. With this feeling they condemned the
accusers of Socrates, and declared him guiltless.
In Athens that higher principle which proved the ruin of the Athenian state,
advanced in its development without intermission. Spirit had acquired the
propensity to gain satisfaction for itself – to reflect. Even in decay the
Spirit of Athens appears majestic, because it manifests itself as the free, the
liberal – exhibiting its successive phases in their pure idiosyncrasy – in that
form in which they really exist. Amiable and cheerful even in the midst of
tragedy is the light- heartedness and nonchalance with which the Athenians
accompany their [national] morality to its grave. We recognize the higher
interest of the new culture in the fact that the people made themselves merry
over their own follies, and found great entertainment in the comedies of
Aristophanes, which have the severest satire for their contents, while they bear
the stamp of the most unbridled mirth.
In Sparta the same corruption is introduced, since the social unit seeks to
assert his individuality against the moral life of the community: but there we
have merely the isolated side of particular subjectivity – corruption in its
undisguised form, blank immorality, vulgar selfishness and venality. All these
passions manifest themselves in Sparta, especially in the persons of its
generals, who, for the most part living at a distance from their country, obtain
an opportunity of securing advantages at the expense of their own state as well
as of those to whose assistance they are sent.
The Macedonian Empire
After the fall of Athens, Sparta took upon herself the Hegemony; but misused it
– as already mentioned – so selfishly, that she was universally hated. Thebes
could not long sustain the part of humiliating Sparta, and was at last exhausted
in the war with the Phocians. The Spartans and the Phocians – the former because
they had surprised the citadel of Thebes, the latter because they had tilled a
piece of land belonging to the Delphin Apollo – had been sentenced to pay
considerable sums of money. Both states however refused payment; for the
Amphictyonic Council had not much more authority than the old German Diet, which
the German princes obeyed only so far as suited their inclination. The Phocians
were then to be punished by the Thebans; but by an egregious piece of violence –
by desecrating and plundering the temple at Delphi – the former attained
momentary superiority. This deed completes the ruin of Greece; the sanctuary was
desecrated, the god so to speak, killed; the last support of unity was thereby
annihilated; reverence for that which in Greece had been as it were always the
final arbiter – its monarchical principle – was displaced, insulted, and trodden
under foot.
The next step in advance is then that quite simple one, that the place of the
dethroned oracle should be taken by another deciding will – a real authoritative
royalty. The foreign Macedonian King – Philip – undertook to avenge the
violation of the oracle, and forthwith took its place, by making himself lord of
Greece. Philip reduced under his dominion the Hellenic States, and convinced
them that it was all over with their independence, and that they could no longer
maintain their own footing. The charge of littleness, harshness, violence, and
political treachery – all those hateful characteristics with which Philip has so
often been reproached – did not extend to the young Alexander, when he placed
himself at the head of the Greeks. He had no need to incur such reproaches; he
had not to form a military force, for he found one already in existence. As he
had only to mount Bucephalus, and take the rein in hand, to make him obsequious
to his will, just so he found that Macedonian phalanx prepared for his purpose –
that rigid welltrained iron mass, the power of which had been demonstrated under
Philip, who copied it from Epaminondas.
Alexander had been educated by the deepest and also the most comprehensive
thinker of antiquity – Aristotle; and the education was worthy of the man who
had undertaken it. Alexander was initiated into the profoundest metaphysics:
therefore his nature was thoroughly refined and liberated from the customary
bonds of mere opinion, crudities and idle fancies. Aristotle left this grand
nature as untrammelled as it was before his instructions commenced; but
impressed upon it a deep perception of what the True is, and formed the spirit
which nature had so richly endowed to a plastic being, rolling freely like an
orb through its circumambient ether.
Thus accomplished, Alexander placed himself at the head of the Hellenes, in
order to lead Greece over into Asia. A youth of twenty, he commanded a
thoroughly experienced army, whose generals were all veterans, well versed in
the art of war. It was Alexander’s aim to avenge Greece for all that Asia had
inflicted upon it for so many years, and to fight out at last the ancient feud
and contest between the East and the West. While in this struggle he retaliated
upon the Oriental world what Greece had suffered from it, he also made a return
for the rudiments of culture which had been derived thence by spreading the
maturity and culmination of that culture over the East; and, as it were, changed
the stamp of subjugated Asia and assimilated it to a Hellenic land. The grandeur
and the interest of this work were proportioned to his genius – to his peculiar
youthful individuality – the like of which in so beautiful a form we have not
seen a second time at the head of such an undertaking. For not only were the
genius of a commander, the greatest spirit, and consummate bravery united in
him, but all these qualities were dignified by the beauty of his character as a
man and an individual. Though his generals were devoted to him, they had been
the long tried servants of his father; and this made his position difficult: for
his greatness and youth was a humiliation to them, as inclined to regard
themselves and the achievements of the past, as a complete work; so that while
their envy, as in Clitus’s case, arose to blind rage, Alexander also was excited
to great violence.
Alexander’s expedition to Asia was at the same time a journey of discovery;
for it was he who first opened the Oriental World to the Europeans, and
penetrated into countries – as e.g. Bactria, Sogdiana, northern India – which
have since been hardly visited by Europeans. The arrangement of the march, and
not less the military genius displayed in the disposition of battles, and in
tactics generally, will always remain an object of admiration. He was great as a
commander in battles, wise in conducting marches and marshalling troops, and the
bravest soldier in the thick of the fight. Even the death of Alexander, which
occurred at Babylon in the three-and-thirtieth year of his age, gives us a
beautiful spectacle of his greatness, and shows in what relation he stood to his
army: for he takes leave of it with the perfect consciousness of his dignity.
Alexander had the good fortune to die at the proper time; i.e. it may be
called good fortune, but it is rather a necessity. That he may stand before the
eyes of posterity as a youth, an early death must hurry him away. Achilles, as
remarked above, begins the Greek world, and his autotype Alexander concludes it:
and these youths not only supply a picture of the fairest kind in their own
persons, but at the same time afford a complete and perfect type of Hellenic
existence. Alexander finished his work and completed his ideal; and thus
bequeathed to the world one of the noblest and most brilliant of visions, which
our poor reflections only serve to obscure. For the great World-Historical form
of Alexander, the modern standard applied by recent historical “Philistines” –
that of virtue or morality – will by no means suffice. And if it be alleged in
depreciation of his merit, that he had no successor, and left behind no dynasty,
we may remark that the Greek kingdoms that arose in Asia after him, are his
dynasty. For two years he was engaged in a campaign in Bactria, which brought
him into contact with the Massagetse and Scythians; and there arose the
Grseco-Bactrian kingdom which lasted for two centuries. Thence the Greeks came
into connection with India, and even with China. The Greek dominion spread
itself over northern India, and Sandrokottus (Chandraguptas) is mentioned as the
first who emancipated himself from it. The same name presents itself indeed
among the Hindoos, but for reasons already stated, we can place very little
dependence upon such mention. Other Greek Kingdoms arose in Asia Minor, in
Armenia, in Syria and Babylonia. But Egypt especially, among the kingdoms of the
successors of Alexander, became a great centre of science and art; for a great
number of its architectural works belong to the time of the Ptolemies, as has
been made out from the deciphered inscriptions. Alexandria became the chief
centre of commerce – the point of union for Eastern manners and tradition with
Western civilization. Besides these, the Macedonian Kingdom, that of Thrace,
stretching beyond the Danube, that of Illyria, and that of Epirus, flourished
under the sway of Greek princes.
Alexander was also extraordinarily attached to the sciences, and he is
celebrated as next to Pericles the most liberal patron of the arts. Meier says
in his “History of Art,” that his intelligent love of art would have secured him
an immortality of fame not less than his conquests.
Section III: The Fall of the Greek Spirit.
This third period in the history of the Hellenic World, which embraces the
protracted development of the evil destiny of Greece, interests us less. Those
who had been Alexander’s Generals, now assuming an independent appearance on the
stage of history as Kings, carried on long wars with each other, and
experienced, almost all of them, the most romantic revolutions of fortune.
Especially remarkable and prominent in this respect is the life of Demetrius
Poliorcetes.
In Greece the States had preserved their existence: brought to a
consciousness of their weakness by Philip and Alexander, they contrived to enjoy
an apparent vitality, and boasted of an unreal independence. That
self-consciousness which independence confers, they could not have; and
diplomatic statesmen took the lead in the several States – orators who were not
at the same time generals, as was the case formerly – e.g. in the person of
Pericles. The countries of Greece now assume various relations to the different
monarchs, who continued to contend for the sovereignty of the Greek States –
partly also for their favor, especially for that of Athens: for Athens still
presented an imposing figure – if not as a Power, yet certainly as the centre of
the higher arts and sciences, especially of Philosophy and Rhetoric. Besides it
kept itself more free from the gross excess, coarseness and passions which
prevailed in the other States, and made them contemptible; and the Syrian and
Egyptian kings deemed it an honor to make Athens large presents of corn and
other useful supplies. To some extent too the kings of the period reckoned it
their greatest glory to render and to keep the Greek cities and states
independent. The Emancipation of Greece had as it were, become the general
watch-word; and it passed for a high title of fame to be called the Deliverer of
Greece. If we examine the hidden political bearing of this word, we shall find
that it denotes the prevention of any indigenous Greek State from obtaining
decided superiority, and keeping all in a state of weakness by separation and
disorganization.
The special peculiarity by which each Greek State was distinguished from the
others consisted in a difference similar to that of their glorious divinities,
each one of whom has his particular character and peculiar being, yet so that
this peculiarity does not derogate from the divinity common to all. When
therefore, this divinity has become weak and has vanished from the States,
nothing but the bare particularity remains – the repulsive speciality which
obstinately and waywardly asserts itself, and which on that very account assumes
a position of absolute dependence and of conflict with others. Yet the feeling
of weakness and misery led to combinations here and there. The Italians and
their allies as a predatory people, set up injustice, violence, fraud, and
insolence to others, as their charter of rights. Sparta was governed by infamous
tyrants and odious passions, and in this condition was dependent on the
Macedonian Kings. The Boeotian subjective character had, after the extinction of
Theban glory, sunk down into indolence and the vulgar desire of coarse sensual
enjoyment. The Achaean league distinguished itself by the aim of its union (the
expulsion of Tyrants,) by rectitude and the sentiment of community. But this too
was obliged to take refuge in the most complicated policy. What we see here on
the whole is a diplomatic condition – an infinite involvement with the most
manifold foreign interests – a subtle intertexture and play of parties, whose
threads are continually being combined anew.
In the internal condition of the states, which, enervated by selfishness and
debauchery, were broken up into factions – each of which on the other hand
directs its attention to foreign lands, and with treachery to its native country
begs for the favors of the Kings – the point of interest is no longer the fate
of these states, but the great individuals, who arise amid the general
corruption, and honorably devote themselves to their country. They appear as
great tragic characters, who with their genius, and the most intense exertion,
are yet unable to extirpate the evils in question; and perish in the struggle,
without having had the satisfaction of restoring to their fatherland repose,
order and freedom, nay, even without having secured a reputation with posterity
free from all stain. Livy says in his prefatory remarks: “In our times we can
neither endure our faults nor the means of correcting them.” And this is quite
as applicable to these Last of the Greeks, who began an undertaking which was as
honorable and noble, as it was sure of being frustrated. Agis and Cleomenes,
Aratus and Philopoemen, thus sunk under the struggle for the good of their
nation. Plutarch sketches for us a highly characteristic picture of these times,
in giving us a representation of the importance of individuals during their
continuance.
The third period of the history of the Greeks brings us to their contact with
that people which was to play the next part on the theatre of the World’s
History; and the chief excuse for this contact was – as pretexts had previously
been – the liberation of Greece. After Perseus the last Macedonian King, in the
year 168 B.C. had been conquered by the Romans and brought in triumph to Rome,
the Achaean league was attacked and broken up, and at last in the year 146 B.C.
Corinth was destroyed. Looking at Greece as Polybius describes it, we see how a
noble nature such as his, has nothing left for it but to despair at the state of
affairs and to retreat into Philosophy; or if it attempts to act, can only die
in the struggle. In deadly contraposition to the multiform variety of passion
which Greece presents – that distracted condition which whelms good and evil in
one common ruin – stands a blind fate – an iron power ready to show up that
degraded condition in all its weakness, and to dash it to pieces in miserable
ruin; for cure, amendment, and consolation are impossible. And this crushing
Destiny is the Roman power.
