Letters To Dead Authors LETTER--To Eusebius of Caesarea (Concerning the gods of the heathen) byLang, Andrew
Touching the Gods of the Heathen, most reverend Father, thou art not
ignorant that even now, as in the time of thy probation on earth,
there is great dissension. That these feigned Deities and idols,
the work of men's hands, are no longer worshipped thou knowest;
neither do men eat meat offered to idols. Even as spake that last
Oracle which murmured forth, the latest and the only true voice from
Delphi, even so "the fair-wrought court divine hath fallen; no more
hath Phoebus his home, no more his laurel-bough, nor the singing
well of water; nay, the sweet-voiced water is silent." The fane is
ruinous, and the images of men's idolatry are dust.
Nevertheless, most worshipful, men do still dispute about the
beginnings of those sinful Gods: such as Zeus, Athene, and
Dionysus: and marvel how first they won their dominion over the
souls of the foolish peoples. Now, concerning these things there is
not one belief, but many; howbeit, there are two main kinds of
opinion. One sect of philosophers believes--as thyself, with
heavenly learning, didst not vainly persuade--that the Gods were the
inventions of wild and bestial folk, who, long before cities were
builded or life was honourably ordained, fashioned forth evil
spirits in their own savage likeness; ay, or in the likeness of the
very beasts that perish. To this judgment, as it is set forth in
thy Book of the Preparation for the Gospel, I, humble as I am, do
give my consent. But on the other side are many and learned men,
chiefly of the tribes of the Alemanni, who have almost conquered the
whole inhabited world. These, being unwilling to suppose that the
Hellenes were in bondage to superstitions handed down from times of
utter darkness and a bestial life, do chiefly hold with the heathen
philosophers, even with the writers whom thou, most venerable, didst
confound with thy wisdom and chasten with the scourge of small cords
of thy wit.
Thus, like the heathen, our doctors and teachers maintain that the
gods of the nations were, in the beginning, such pure natural
creatures as the blue sky, the sun, the air, the bright dawn, and
the fire; but, as time went on, men, forgetting the meaning of their
own speech and no longer understanding the tongue of their own
fathers, were misled and beguiled into fashioning all those
lamentable tales: as that Zeus, for love of mortal women, took the
shape of a bull, a ram, a serpent, an ant, an eagle, and sinned in
such wise as it is a shame even to speak of.
Behold, then, most worshipful, how these doctors and learned men
argue, even like the philosophers of the heathen whom thou didst
confound. For they declare the gods to have been natural elements,
sun and sky and storm, even as did thy opponents; and, like them, as
thou saidst, "they are nowise at one with each other in their
explanations." For of old some boasted that Hera was the Air; and
some that she signified the love of woman and man; and some that she
was the waters above the Earth; and others that she was the Earth
beneath the waters; and yet others that she was the Night, for that
Night is the shadow of Earth: as if, forsooth, the men who first
worshipped Hera had understanding of these things! And when Hera
and Zeus quarrel unseemly (as Homer declareth), this meant (said the
learned in thy days) no more than the strife and confusion of the
elements, and was not in the beginning an idle slanderous tale.
To all which, most worshipful, thou didst answer wisely: saying
that Hera could not be both night, and earth, and water, and air,
and the love of sexes, and the confusion of the elements; but that
all these opinions were vain dreams, and the guesses of the learned.
And why--thou saidst--even if the Gods were pure natural creatures,
are such foul things told of them in the Mysteries as it is not
fitting for me to declare. "These wanderings, and drinkings, and
loves, and seductions, that would be shameful in men, why," thou
saidst, "were they attributed to the natural elements; and wherefore
did the Gods constantly show themselves, like the sorcerers called
werewolves, in the shape of the perishable beasts?" But, mainly,
thou didst argue that, till the philosophers of the heathen were
agreed among themselves, not all contradicting each the other, they
had no semblance of a sure foundation for their doctrine.
To all this and more, most worshipful Father, I know not what the
heathen answered thee. But, in our time, the learned men who stand
to it that the heathen Gods were in the beginning the pure elements,
and that the nations, forgetting their first love and the
significance of their own speech, became confused and were betrayed
into foul stories about the pure Gods--these learned men, I say,
agree no whit among themselves. Nay, they differ one from another,
not less than did Plutarch and Porphyry and Theagenes, and the rest
whom thou didst laugh to scorn. Bear with me, Father, while I tell
thee how the new Plutarchs and Porphyrys do contend among
themselves; and yet these differences of theirs they call "Science"!
Consider the goddess Athene, who sprang armed from the head of Zeus,
even as--among the fables of the poor heathen folk of seas thou
never knewest--goddesses are fabled to leap out from the armpits or
feet of their fathers. Thou must know that what Plato, in the
"Cratylus," made Socrates say in jest, the learned among us practise
in sad earnest. For, when they wish to explain the nature of any
God, they first examine his name, and torment the letters thereof,
arranging and altering them according to their will, and flying off
to the speech of the Indians and Medes and Chaldeans, and other
Barbarians, if Greek will not serve their turn. How saith Socrates?
"I bethink me of a very new and ingenious idea that occurs to me;
and, if I do not mind, I shall be wiser than I should be by to-
morrow's dawn. My notion is that we may put in and pull out letters
at pleasure and alter the accents."
Even so do the learned--not at pleasure, maybe, but according to
certain fixed laws (so they declare); yet none the more do they
agree among themselves. And I deny not that they discover many
things true and good to be known; but, as touching the names of the
Gods, their learning, as it standeth, is confusion. Look, then, at
the goddess Athene: taking one example out of hundreds. We have
dwelling in our coasts Muellerus, the most erudite of the doctors of
the Alemanni, and the most golden-mouthed. Concerning Athene, he
saith that her name is none other than, in the ancient tongue of the
Brachmanae, Ahana, which, being interpreted, means the Dawn. "And
that the morning light," saith he, "offers the best starting-point
for the later growth of Athene has been proved, I believe, beyond
the reach of doubt or even cavil." {1}
Yet this same doctor candidly lets us know that another of his
nation, the witty Benfeius, hath devised another sense and origin of
Athene, taken from the speech of the old Medes. But Muellerus
declares to us that whosoever shall examine the contention of
Benfeius "will be bound, in common honesty, to confess that it is
untenable." This, Father, is "one for Benfeius," as the saying
goes. And as Muellerus holds that these matters "admit of almost
mathematical precision," it would seem that Benfeius is but a
Dummkopf, as the Alemanni say, in their own language, when they
would be pleasant among themselves.
Now, wouldst thou credit it? despite the mathematical plainness of
the facts, other Alemanni agree neither with Muellerus, nor yet with
Benfeius, and will neither hear that Athene was the Dawn, nor yet
that she is "the feminine of the Zend Thraetana athwyana." Lo, you!
how Prellerus goes about to show that her name is drawn not from
Ahana and the old Brachmanae, nor athwyana and the old Medes, but
from "the root [Greek text], whence [Greek text], the air, or [Greek
text], whence [Greek text], a flower." Yea, and Prellerus will have
it that no man knows the verity of this matter. None the less he is
very bold, and will none of the Dawn; but holds to it that Athene
was, from the first, "the clear pure height of the Air, which is
exceeding pure in Attica."
Now, Father, as if all this were not enough, comes one Roscherus in,
with a mighty great volume on the Gods, and Furtwaenglerus, among
others, for his ally. And these doctors will neither with
Rueckertus and Hermannus, take Athene for "wisdom in person;" nor
with Welckerus and Prellerus, for "the goddess of air;" nor even,
with Muellerus and mathematical certainty, for "the Morning-Red:"
but they say that Athene is the "black thunder-cloud, and the
lightning that leapeth therefrom"! I make no doubt that other
Alemanni are of other minds: quot Alemanni tot sententiae.
Yea, as thou saidst of the learned heathen, [Greek text]. Yet these
disputes of theirs they call "Science"! But if any man says to the
learned: "Best of men, you are erudite, and laborious and witty;
but, till you are more of the same mind, your opinions cannot be
styled knowledge. Nay, they are at present of no avail whereon to
found any doctrine concerning the Gods"--that man is railed at for
his "mean" and "weak" arguments.
Was it thus, Father, that the heathen railed against thee? But I
must still believe, with thee, that these evil tales of the Gods
were invented "when man's life was yet brutish and wandering" (as is
the life of many tribes that even now tell like tales), and were
maintained in honour by the later Greeks "because none dared alter
the ancient beliefs of his ancestors." Farewell, Father; and all
good be with thee, wishes thy well-wisher and thy disciple.
{1} "The Lesson of Jupiter."--Nineteenth Century, October 1885.
