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| Chapter XXII.—Pretended Symbolical Explanations.
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Chapter XXII.—Pretended Symbolical Explanations.
But perhaps these things are poetic vagary, and there is
some natural explanation of them, such as this by Empedocles:—
“Let Jove be fire, and Juno source of life,
With Pluto and Nêstis, who bathes with tears
The human founts.”
If, then, Zeus is fire, and Hera the
earth, and Aïdoneus the air, and Nê stis water, and these are
elements—fire, water, air—none of them is a god, neither
Zeus, nor Hera, nor Aïdoneus; for from matter separated into parts
by God is their constitution and origin:—
“Fire, water, earth, and the air’s gentle height,
And harmony with these.”
Here are things which without harmony
cannot abide; which would be brought to ruin by strife: how then can
any one say that they are
gods? Friendship, according to
Empedocles, has an aptitude to govern, things that are compounded are
governed, and that which is apt to govern has the dominion; so that if
we make the power of the governed and the governing one and the same,
we shall be, unawares to ourselves, putting perishable and fluctuating
and changeable matter on an equality with the uncreated, and eternal,
and ever self-accordant God. Zeus is, according to the Stoics, the
fervid part of nature; Hera is the air (ἀήρ)—the
very name, if it be joined to itself, signifying this;782
Poseidon
is what is drunk (water, πόσις). But these
things are by different persons explained of natural objects in
different ways. Some call Zeus twofold masculine-feminine air; others
the season which brings about mild weather, on which account it was
that he alone escaped from Kronos. But to the Stoics it may be said,
If you acknowledge one God, the supreme and uncreated and eternal One,
and as many compound bodies as there are changes of matter, and say
that the Spirit of God, which pervades matter, obtains according to its
variations a diversity of names, the forms of matter will become the
body of God; but when the elements are destroyed in the conflagration,
the names will necessarily perish along with the forms, the Spirit of
God alone remaining. Who, then, can believe that those bodies, of which
the variation according to matter is allied to corruption, are gods?
But to those who say that Kronos is time, and Rhea the earth, and that
she becomes pregnant by Kronos, and brings forth, whence she is regarded
as the mother of all; and that he begets and devours his offspring;
and that the mutilation is the intercourse of the male with the female,
which cuts off the seed and casts it into the womb, and generates a human
being, who has in himself the sexual desire, which is Aphrodité;
and that the madness of Kronos is the turn of season, which destroys
animate and inanimate things; and that the bonds and Tartarus are time,
which is changed by seasons and disappears;—to such persons
we say, If Kronos is time, he changes; if a season, he turns about;
if darkness, or frost, or the moist part of nature, none of these is
abiding; but the Deity is immortal, and immoveable, and unalterable:
so that neither is Kronos nor his image God. As regards Zeus again:
If he is air, born of Kronos, of which the male part is called Zeus and
the female Hera (whence both sister and wife), he is subject to change;
if a season, he turns about: but the Deity neither changes nor shifts
about. But why should I trespass on your patience by saying more,
when you know so well what has been said by each of those who have
resolved these things into nature, or what various writers have thought
concerning nature, or what they say concerning Athênâ,
whom they affirm to be the wisdom (φρόνησις)
pervading all things; and concerning Isis, whom they call
the birth of all time (φύσις
αἰῶνος), from whom all have
sprung, and by whom all exist; or concerning Osiris, on whose murder
by Typhon his brother Isis with her son Orus sought after his limbs,
and finding them honoured them with a sepulchre, which sepulchre is
to this day called the tomb of Osiris? For whilst they wander up and
down about the forms of matter, they miss to find the God who can
only be beheld by the reason, while they deify the elements and their
several parts, applying different names to them at different times:
calling the sowing of the corn, for instance, Osiris (hence they say,
that in the mysteries, on the finding of the members of his body, or
the fruits, Isis is thus addressed: We have found, we wish thee joy),
the fruit of the vine Dionysus, the vine itself Semelé, the heat of
the sun the thunderbolt. And yet, in fact, they who refer the fables to
actual gods, do anything rather than add to their divine character; for
they do not perceive, that by the very defence they make for the gods,
they confirm the things which are alleged concerning them. What have
Europa, and the bull, and the swan, and Leda, to do with the earth and
air, that the abominable intercourse of Zeus with them should be taken
for the intercourse of the earth and air? But missing to discover the
greatness of God, and not being able to rise on high with their reason
(for they have no affinity for the heavenly place), they pine away among
the forms of matter, and rooted to the earth, deify the changes of the
elements: just as if any one should put the ship he sailed in the place
of the steersman. But as the ship, although equipped with everything,
is of no use if it have not a steersman, so neither are the elements,
though arranged in perfect order, of any service apart from the providence
of God. For the ship will not sail of itself; and the elements without
their Framer will not move.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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