THE PAGAN ORACLES 1

Ir is remarkable-and, without a previous explanation, it might seem paradoxical to say it—that oftentimes under a continual accession of light important subjects grow more and more enigmatical. In times when nothing was explained, the student, torpid as his teacher, saw nothing which called for explanation: all appeared one monotonous blank. But no sooner had an early twilight begun to solicit the creative faculties of the eye than many dusky objects, with outlines imperfectly defined, began to converge the eye, and to strengthen the nascent interest of the spectator. It is true that light, in its final plenitude, is calculated to disperse all darkness. But this effect belongs to its consummation. In its earlier and struggling states, light does but reveal darkness. It makes the darkness palpable and "visible.” 2 Of which we may see a sensible illustration in a gloomy glasshouse, where the sullen lustre from the furnace does but mass and accumulate the thick darkness in the rear upon which the moving figures are relieved. Or we may see an intellectual illustration in the mind of the savage, on whose

1 From Blackwood's Magazine for March 1842 reprinted in greater part by De Quincey in 1858 in the eighth volume of his Collected Writings, but with omissions, and with additions both to the text and in footnotes.-M.

2 Accordingly, some five-and-thirty years ago I attempted to show that Milton's famous expression in the "Paradise Lost," "No light, but rather darkness visible," was not (as critics imagined) a gigantic audacity, but a simple trait of description, faithful to the literal realities of a phenomenon (sullen light intermingled with massy darkness) which Milton had noticed with closer attention than the mob of careless observers. Equivalent to this is Milton's own expression, "Teach light to counterfeit a gloom," in "Il Penseroso."

blank surface there exists no doubt or perplexity at all, none of the pains connected with half-knowledge; he is conscious of no darkness, simply because for him there exists no visual ray of speculation, no vestige of prelusive light.

Similar, and continually more similar, has been the condition of Ancient History. Once yielding a mere barren crop of facts and dates, slowly it has been kindling of late years into life and deep interest under superior treatment. And hitherto, as the light has advanced, pari passu have the masses of darkness strengthened. Every question solved has been the parent of three new questions unmasked. And the power of breathing life into dry bones has but seemed to multiply the skeletons and lifeless remains; for the very natural reason that these dry bones formerly (whilst viewed as incapable of revivification) had seemed less numerous, because everywhere confounded to the eye with stocks and stones, so long as there was no motive of hope for marking the distinction between them.

Amongst all the illustrations which might illuminate this truth, none is so instructive as the large question of PAGAN ORACLES. Every part, indeed, of the Pagan religion—the course, geographically or ethnographically, of its traditions, the vast labyrinth of its mythology, the deductions of its contradictory genealogies, the disputed meaning of its many secret "mysteries" (TeλETαι, symbolic rites or initiations), all these have been submitted of late years to the scrutiny of glasses more powerful, applied under more combined arrangements, and directed according to new principles more comprehensively framed. I cannot in sincerity affirm, always with immediate advantage. But, even where the individual effort may have been a failure as regarded the immediate object, rarely indeed has it happened that much indirect illumination did not result-which, afterwards entering into combination with other scattered currents of light, has issued in discoveries of value; although, perhaps, any one contribution, taken separately, had been, and would have remained, inoperative. Much has been accomplished, chiefly of late years, and, confining our view to Ancient History, almost exclusively amongst the Germans-by the Savignys, the Niebuhrs, the Ottfried Muellers. And, if that much has left

still more to do, it has also brought the means of working upon a scale of accelerated speed.

The books now existing upon the Ancient Oracles-above all, upon the Greek Oracles-amount to a small library. The facts have been collected from all quarters, examined, sifted, winnowed. Theories have been raised upon these facts under every angle of aspect; and yet, after all, I profess myself dissatisfied. Amongst much that is sagacious, I feel, and I resent with disgust, a taint of falsehood diffused over these recent speculations from vulgar and even counterfeit incredulity: the one gross vice of German philosophy, not less determinate or less misleading than that vice which heretofore, through many centuries, had impoverished this subject, and had sealed up its discussion under the anile superstition of the Ecclesiastical Fathers.

These Fathers, both Greek and Latin, had the ill fortune to be extravagantly esteemed by the Church of Rome; whence, under a natural reaction, they were systematically depreciated by the great leaders of the Protestant Reformation. And yet hardly in a corresponding degree. For there was, after all, even among the Reformers, a deep-seated prejudice in behalf of all that was "primitive" in Christianity; under which term, by some confusion of ideas, the Patristic Literature benefited. Primitive Christianity was reasonably venerated, and on this argument that for the first three centuries it was more demonstrably sincere. I do not think so much of that sincerity which affronted the fear of persecution; because, after all, the searching persecutions were rare and intermitting, and not perhaps, in any case, so fiery as they have been represented. I think more of that gentle but insidious persecution which lay in the solicitations of besieging friends, and more still of the continual temptations which haunted the irresolute Christian in the fascinations of the public amusements. The theatre, the circus, and, far beyond both, the cruel amphitheatre, constituted, for the ancient world, a passionate enjoyment, that by many authors, and especially through one period of time, is described as going to the verge of frenzy. And we, in modern times, are far too little aware in what degree these great carnivals, together with another attraction of great cities, the pomps

and festivals of the Pagan worship, broke the monotony of domestic life, which, for the old world, was even more oppressive than it is for us. In all principal cities, so as to be within the reach of almost all provincial inhabitants, there was a hippodrome, often uniting the functions of the circus and the amphitheatre; and there was a theatre. From all such pleasures the Christian was sternly excluded by his very profession of faith. From the festivals of the Pagan religion his exclusion was even more absolute; against them he was a sworn militant protester from the hour of his baptism. And, when these modes of pleasurable relaxation had been subtracted from ancient life, what could remain ? Even less, perhaps, than most readers have been led to consider, because the ancients had no such power of extensive locomotion, of refreshment for their wearied minds by travelling and change of scene, as we children of modern civilisation. No ships had then been fitted up for passengers, nor public carriages established, nor roads opened extensively, nor hotels so much as imagined hypothetically; because the relation of §evia 1 or the obligation to reciprocal hospitality, and partially the Roman relation of patron and client, had stifled the first motions of enterprise in any such direction: in fact, no man travelled but the soldier and the man of political authority. Consequently, in sacrificing public amusements, the Christians sacrificed all pleasure whatsoever that was not rigorously domestic; whilst, in facing the contingencies of persecutions that might arise under the rapid succession of changing

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1 "Relation of Xenia" :-A citizen of Rome, if likely to travel, established correspondents all over the Mediterranean; of course, therefore, at so splendid a city as Corinth. After that, the Corinthian correspondent, when drawn by business of any kind to Rome, went thither without anxiety-relying upon his privilege; and, upon producing his tessera, or ticket of identification, he was immediately admitted to all the rights of hospitality; foremost amongst which ranked the advantage of good counsel against the risk of collision with the laws or usages of a strange city, and the further advantage of powerful aid in the case of having already incurred that risk. Inversely, the Roman enjoyed a parity of protection and hospitable entertainment on going to Corinth. And not unfrequently this reciprocal tie descended through several generations. The distant households drew upon each other at sight.

Emperors, they faced a perpetual anxiety more trying to the fortitude than any fixed and measurable evil. Here, certainly, we have a guarantee for the deep faithfulness of early Christians, such as never can exist for more mixed bodies of professors, subject to less searching trials.

Better the Primitive Christians were perhaps (not individually better, but better on the total body); yet they were not in any intellectual sense wiser. Unquestionably the elder Christians participated in the local follies, prejudices, superstitions, of their several provinces and cities, except where any of these happened to be too conspicuously at war with the spirit of love or the spirit of purity which exhaled at every point from the Christian faith; and, in all intellectual features, as were the Christians generally, such were the Fathers. Amongst the Greek Fathers, one might be unusually learned, as Clement of Alexandria; and another might be reputed unusually eloquent, as Gregory Nazianzen, or Basil. Amongst the Latin Fathers, one might be a man of admirable genius, as far beyond the poor, vaunted Rousseau in the impassioned grandeur of his thoughts as he was in truth and purity of heart,-I speak of St. Augustine (more briefly known as St. Austin),—and many might be distinguished by various literary merits. But could these advantages anticipate a higher civilisation? Most unquestionably some of the Fathers were the élite of their own age, but not in advance of their age. They, like all their contemporaries, were besieged by errors, ancient, inveterate, traditional; and, accidentally, from one cause special to themselves, they were not merely liable to error, but usually prone to error. This cause lay in the polemic form which so often they found a necessity, or a convenience, or a temptation, for assuming, as teachers or defenders of the truth.

He who reveals a body of awful truth to a candid and willing auditory is content with the grand simplicities of truth in the quality of his proofs. And truth, where it happens to be of a high order, is generally its own witness to all who approach it in the spirit of child-like docility. But far different is the position of that teacher who addresses an audience composed in various proportions of sceptical inquirers, obstinate opponents, and malignant scoffers. Less