II.II. Phases of Individuality Æsthetically Conditioned

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.

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 natures 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 specialised 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. 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 Λύκειος 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 there; 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.