Social and literary papers

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I. ^SCHYLUS ON SOME MODERN SOCIAL PROBLEMS 9

II. A Satirist in the Second Century ... 31

I. .^chylus On Some Modern Social Problems

./EscHYLUs, the founder of the Greek lyric drama, possessed a soul severely grand like that of Milton, austerely just like that of Dante; and, like these poets, he too was drawn toward the religious, moral, and social problems of his time and of all time. These great masters of poetry are driven by a mighty wind ; they are the voices of an uncounted multitude ; and so must it be with all the great bards of the world's great literature.

No deeper problems occupy now the thought of mankind than those which make the contents of the " Prometheus " of ^schylus. There remains to us only one of the parts of this trilogy, — the second, or middle one, — and the structure can be completed only by inference ; but what we have is enough to show the groundwork of the whole.

In the " Prometheus " is symbolized the progress of the human race; and under this statement we have a representation of the poet's view of man's relation to the universe, of the advance of culture lO MSCHYLUS ON

and civilization, and of those problems of might and right, of justice and equality, of those eternal laws of progressive change for good, which it is the work to-day of science to establish for the satisfaction of man's reason and intellect.

According to the appearance that Nature presents to the first men, ignorant of any means of protection, of defence, — "what is its aspect ? Evidently, that of a hostile, tyrannical, merciless being, — now blasting with burning heat, now crystallizing with icy cold, now sending, according to his pleasure, the deadly arrows of pestilence, now sapping the strength by old age, and extinguishing all by death. In social life also are found might of arm and cunning of brain, securing to themselves wealth and power, and then plunged into the lowest wretchedness, — the ruler of a people begging his bread; the dweller in palaces an outcast in the desert, glad to find shelter in a cave, and share with the wild beast its prey. Man seems despised and hated by some higher powers. The gods envy his too great prosperity : they are indifferent to his good. Everywhere is the spectacle of triumphant might, — and of man, feeble, ignorant, suffering under numberless ills, dying from generation to generation, yet engaged in a hand-to-hand struggle with this seemingly irresistible force.

What must first free him? Knowledge, foresight, the divine spark within of aspiration and unconquerable will ; the never-resting desire to better his condition, to find out all secrets, and use for himself every divine force, every hidden power. Whatever furthers this tendency to free and help humanity is man's friend, man's benefactor, man's divine protector and champion.

With a different theory of the origin arid progress of civilization from that which looked back to an age of gold, and laid its paradise in some far-off period of blessed innocence and of happy contentment with the gods, jEschylus describes the early condition of the human race as but just removed from that of brutes : —

" They dwelt In hollowed holes, like swarms of tiny ants In sunless depths of caverns ; and they had No certain signs of winter, nor of spring Flower-laden, nor of summer with her fruits.

And in another place he says, —

" I, poor I, through giving Great gifts to mortal men, am prisoner made In these fast fetters ; yea, in fennel stalk I snatched the hidden spring of stolen fire, Which is to men a teacher of all arts. Their chief resource."

In Prometheus, then, is represented that grand idea of a progressive culture, under the symbolic form of a Titanic contest with the Ruler of the world, the Power that has seated itself by mere force on the throne, and who hates the human race, so that he is willing to see it perish, that its place may be supplied by creatures of his

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own. In the view of .^schylus, Zeus himself was subject to a power which he must acknowledge, or himself in turn be overthrown. This power, moreover, was not the mere blank, rigid fate which is often spoken of, — not the blind, irresistible chance for which no one could account, and before which each one must quake and tremble; but this power was the Eternal Justice, the law of right, the everlasting balance, harmony, and proportion of all things human and divine, which raised up the low and cast down the high, which visited arrogance with humiliation, which levelled every excess, and filled up every hole and cranny of the universe with the needed supply. Prometheus boldly contended for right against might, for the suffering against his potent oppressor, for the vile worm against him who trampled it in the dust. He identified him- . self with the race of men, was their champion and savior ; and therefore he suffered.

r. For the poet recognized the fundamental law of all human growth and progress, — the law of martyrdom, — and has embodied it in that godlike form spiked to the bare Caucasus : —

" Behold me bound, a god to evil doomed, The foe of Zeus, and held In hatred by all gods Who tread the courts of Zeus : And this for my great love, Too great for mortal men."

This law of martyrdom is seen in the very constitution of the natural world. Each successive step of ascending life is gained by the rendering up Of life in that which precedes; growth comes out of decay, life out of death. The earth is fertile because innumerable forms have lived and died. The solidest rock is crumbled into finest, impalpable powder ; the hardest mineral renders, up its form, and, equally with the tenderest moss disintegrating at the touch, it becomes dissolved into dust ; plants springing from these inhale the atmosphere and rains of heaven and ministering juices of the soil, and then give themselves up in turn to animal and man. Each higher form lives by the martyrdom of some lower, and death is everywhere the price of life. Is it any different in the moral and social spheres.' Is not the present civilization of the world — its knowledge, art, comfort, well-being — the result of innumerable sorrows and deaths .' Is not every stone of the foundation and every joint of the rising superstructure cemented by blood of the body, blood of the mind, blood of the very heart and soul of the noblest of the race in every age and among every people, from the earliest moment until this very hour in which we breathe our little lives .' Not alone upon the battle-field, the gibbet, the cross, — not alone in dungeons and filthy prison-cells, have martyrs struggled and suffered for the good of man ; but on sea and in the wilderness, in the workshop and the study, the pioneer of truth has swung his axe, has gazed into the heavens, has pored over the annals of the past, has delved and toiled, has despaired and hoped again, has seen the

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stars rise and set, the sun pursue his daily course, and seasons come and go, — still eager for the coming truth, watching for the new day, looking through tearful eyes for a light that no mortal eye has ever seen, a good that his own soul whispers shall one day be the heritage of all his fellow-men. - This law of life Fichte has thus enunciated:

" Nothing individual can live in itself or for itself, but all live in the whole ; and this whole unceasingly dies for itself in unspeakable love, that it may rise again in new life. This is the spiritual law : all that comes into being falls a sacrifice to an eternally increasing and ascending life ; and this law constantly rules over all, without waiting for the consent of any. Here alone lies the distinction, — whether man allow himself to be led, with the halter round his neck, like a beast to the slaughter, or freely and nobly brings his life a gift to the altar of the eternal life, in the full fore-enjoyment of thelife which is to arise from its ashes."

Does a man, then, really want to do good to man? What must he look for.' Martyrdom, — that is, he must himself share in the suffering that he would relieve ; he must himself take upon his own shoulders the burden he would remove. The depth of his suffering must be in proportion to the wretchedness he alleviates. The cup of human woe, who can drink it off.? Yet it must be drunk off; and because it must, Zeus was called tyrant, usurper, regardless of the welfare of the race of men. So he seemed to the earliest rude view; but this view recedes, and, as man sees the real blessedness of the law, it is the law not of death, but of life. ^Eschylus himself, in another drama, "The Suppliants," says, —

" All that God works is effortless and calm ; Seated on loftiest throne, Thence, though we know not how, He works his perfect will."

Again, the poet addresses him as " blest above all blessed ones," as —

" Our Father, author of our life, Directing all his plans, — The great Master workman, Zeus."

All the great legends of mythology recognize this law, and thus show its universality. The hero, to save his country, must leap into the yawning chasm. The serpent cannot be slain unless its slayer receives a fatal hurt. The beleagured city can be taken, but the price of victory is the death of the beloved chief. To benefit man, the gods themselves must be incarnate, and share his daily life.

But more significant than all is this story of Prometheus, the god-descended lover of the miserable race of men, who brings to them fire, the arts, the gifts, which ennoble and bless humanity. But the price must be paid. His heart is devoured only to be perpetually renewed. The thunderbolt sinks him to Hades. He sinks, crying out, —

" O Mother venerable !

O JSXhex ! rolling round, The common light of all, See ye what wrongs I bear? "

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Have we any solution to this problem of the ages ? Can we do good on any other terms ? Be a reformer, if you will ; but nothing will be reformed unless you bear in your own heart and mind and soul the evil you would remove. Work for the sorrowing, the debased, the oppressed, under any form, and the good will be in proportion to the bitter ingredients that fill one's own cup. By no high road of science have we yet escaped the operation of this universal necessity. The answer to the problem is found only in the higher law of love, which transforms the external pain into the highest spiritual blessedness.

In Prometheus the poet has symbolized humanity endowed with a divine spark of intelligence, raised by this above the brute, eager for all knowledge, resisting all demands that he shall unconditionally submit and bow himself in humility before the crushing might of Nature and natural forces, — believing, against all the threats of pain and all the wretchedness hurled upon his head, that he shall yet triumph and be blessed. Prometheus trusts in the prophetic utterance of his mother, Themis; that is, in righteous Order, holy Justice, harmonious Law.

The tender-hearted ocean-nymphs tell him he has sinned, though "a mist of fear and full of tears comes o'er their eyes." The rough but friendly Oceanus comes to advise him "to know himself and fit himself to words full new," to "humble himself and recognize in his suffering

SOME MODERN SOCIAL PROBLEMS. ly

the punishment of his over-lofty speech." The facile Hermes, messenger of Zeus, bids him "be wise, and not to think that self-willed pride shall ever prove better than good counsel. " The chorus, too, chants the beauty of implicit obedience to the enthroned power that rules by might, and not by right: —

" Sweet is it ia strong hope

To spend long years of life,

With bright and cheering joy

Our heart's thoughts nourishing.

I shudder, seeing thee

By twice ten thousand woes ;

For thou in pride of heart,

Having no fear of Zeus,

In thine own obstinacy,

Dost show for mortal men

Affection over-great,

Prometheus, — yea, too great."

An eminent commentator, the Rev. Edward H. Plumptre, adds his voice to that of these poor comforters of the mighty sufferer, saying that .^schylus here embodied " the truth that the first result of the possession and the consciousness of enlarged powers is a new self-assertion, the spirit of independence and rebellion against the control of a divine order, the 'many inventions ' that tend to evil, an outburst of impiety and lawlessness, needing the discipline of punishment before it can be brought round again into a nobler harmony."

How completely does this utterance chime with

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the words put into the mouth of the chorus ! " Rebellion against a divine order," "self-assertion, many inventions tending to evil," says the English clergyman. "Pride of heart, having no fear of Zeus," sang the temporizing chorus. How much easier and sweeter to conform, to sign the accepted creed, to enjoy what goods the present ruling gods vouchsafe, than to follow the highest inspiration, to do the good deed and speak the protesting word that leads to social martyrdom! "Rebellion against the control of a divine order." Not such is the representation of .^Eschylus, whose Zeus, in the " Prometheus," was only a divine order in the making, not the father and maintainer of the harmonious order of the world, whom he elsewhere presents. The Greek god was in a process of evolution, as well as the Greek world and the Greek man. Out of primeval chaos and night, out of the contending powers of Nature and the fierce tendencies of men, was to be finally established that law of which "no less is acknowleged than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world, to whom all things in heaven and earth do homage, the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power, — all, with uniform consent, admiring her as the mother of their peace and joy."

Many, many ages were to pass away before this could be established in the mind and heart of the race. Meanwhile, humanity must suffer, and could only be redeemed by "self-assertion," by protest against unjust might, against every form of evil and wrong ; by the suffering of those content to renounce "bright and cheering joys," and in what friends often, as well as foes, pronounce a spirit of rebellion, maintaining unflinchingly their own independence, their own deepest inspiration.

What does that leader of all conservatism — the Papal power — say to-day of the progress-of science, the speculations of the intellect, and the investigations into Nature's laws? "It is an ungodly spirit of rebellion against the control of a divine order;" it is "a restless spirit of dissatisfaction that seeks out 'many inventions;'" it is "that unholy curiosity which would be wise above what is written, and which is leading men — a deceptive will-o'-the-wisp — into the swamps of worldliness and utter despair." The divine spark is not in humanity, but in the Church. The inspiration of God is not in the hearts of men, but in an established organization. The salvation is not in knowledge, but in faith. The praiseworthy act is not to seek the well-being and happiness of man, but to acquiesce, without murmuring, in the commands of the mighty Zeus.

Such, under modified forms, is everywhere the same warning of a timorous conservatism. Whoever distrusts human reason; whoever fears the advance of humanity in all that relates to the principles of equality, justice, and truth; whoever believes that man must be forever kept down by

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authority, by appeals to fear, and by manacles of ■ restraint, — whoever he may be, and under whatsoever name he may intrench himself, he belongs to that class who would say to Prometheus in the words of the shifty Hermes, —

" Search well, be wise, nor think that self-willed pride Shall ever better prove than counsel good.

2. In -(Eschylus further is to be found that principle of which we hear so much at the present day, — the law of heredity; a law as absolute as fate, destiny, irresistible necessity. The doom hovers over a race. The terrible and avenging Furies cannot be escaped, because not merely the ancient crime, but the ancient tendency to crime, survives, and at last works out the final retribution, — the purification of the evil stain from the earth. The evil-doer fills up the cup of sin; and not until he does fill this up freely, and from the groundwork of his own self-determined will, does the fearful vengeance descend upon his head. Thus the chorus chants in the Oresteia: —

" Because of blood that mother earth has drunk. The guilt of slaughter that will vengeance work Is fixed indelibly; And Ate, working grief, Permits awhile the guilty one to wait. That so he may be full and overflow With all-devouring ill."

No! with him there is no background of causeless fatality from which there is no escape, and which works at random with its fearful hurling of the thunderbolt at a venture.

Neither does he give that older view of the gods as envying the too great prosperity of a mortal man, whom therefore they thrust down from his lofty pinnacle of happiness. Only as riches and power brought with them arrogance and lawless freedom in evil, only as presumptuous insolence followed upon unmeasured prosperity, did the unsleeping eye of a righteous justice strike down and annihilate the offender. What can be clearer in statement than the choral strophe, —

" There lives a saying, framed in olden days, In memories of men, that high estate Full grown brings forth its young, nor childless dies ; And that from great success Springs to the race a woe insatiable. But I, apart from all, Hold this my creed alone : That impious act it is that offspring breeds. Like to their parent stock ; For still in every house That loves the right, their fate for evermore Hath issue good and fair."

Yes; man inherits the tendencies to vice, to evil-doing, to insanity, to drunkenness, to folly, as well as tendencies to virtue, to right-doing and right -feeling, to purity and moral strength. The old poet has not misinterpreted or misapplied the great social law that lies at the basis of much of the philanthropic effort of to-day. He has echoed and re-echoed its fearful truth ; and so much of a

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remorseless fate as lurks in the assertion of the modern philanthropist, the modern scientific statist, so much and no more pervades his statelyverse. No more of a fate, blind and resistless, hovers with black wings over his rhythmical page than over that of Shakspeare. In both we can clearly read the law of heredity, and the overruling powers of justice and of right. In both are presented the same essential facts; but they are presented from different sides, — in yEschylus from the divine, and in Shakspeare from the human side ; but in both is the working out of the same harmonious order, the restoring of the same equal balance of unerring retribution. In neither can any hopeful struggle be made against the higher decrees of wisdom, order, justice, and truth. In Shakspeare we see that no man can flee from himself ; in .^Eschylus, that no man can flee from Zeus : —

" Hard are these things to judge : The spoiler shall be spoiled, The slayer pay his debt ; Yea, while Zeus liveth through the ages, this Lives also, — that the doer bear his deed ; For this is Heaven's decree.

Who now can drive from out the kingly house The brood of curses d^rk ?

The house to Ate cleaves."

That is why she cannot be driven out, because the house cleaves to her, and not because she cleaves to the house.

Matthew Arnold, quoting this passage from

Davison, " Conscience and the present constitution of things are not corresponding terms: it is conscience and the issue of things which go together," remarks : —

" It is so ; and this is what makes the spectacle of human affairs so edifying and so sublime. The world goes on, nations and men arrive and depart with varying fortune, as it appears, with time and chance happening unto all. Look a little deeper, and you will see that one strain runs through it all : nations and men, whoever is shipwrecked is shipwrecked on conduct. It is the God of Israel steadily and irresistibly asserting himself, — the Eternal that loveth righteousness."

What is this but another expression of the Greek poet's view: "While Zeus liveth through the ages, this lives also, — that the doer bear his deed " ? What but an echo, from a different summit, of that strain which runs through all humanity, because in humanity there is one inspiring life.'

3. To-day, again, we have the problem discussed of the accumulation and distribution of wealth; but it is not new. The particular form under which it comes is adapted to our age; but the instability of that wealth gained by unjust means, by means that disturbed the harmonjs of the social order, was loudly proclaimed by our poet, making the burden of many a . chorus. He speaks of the vision of truth which is manifest to the children

" Of those who, overbold, Breathed raging war beyond the bounds of right ;

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Their houses (jwrfiUed with precious store

Above the golden mean.

For still there is no bulwark strong in wealth

Against destruction's doom,

To one who, in the pride of wantonness,

Spurns the great altar of the Right and Just."

Ah, well! there are other means to-day of accumulating unjust wealth, of towering above the golden mean, besides laying under contribution friendly cities, and sacking the rich strongholds of neighboring allies. There are unjust monopolies, grinding oppressions of capital and machinery, vast, legalized means of sucking up the life-blood of the community, by which millions upon millions are piled up for the few, while the great mass is sunk in poverty, vice, and ignorance. Oh for some .(Eschylus to thunder out in his majestic chorus, —

" And the dark-robed Erinnys, in due time, By adverse chance of life,

Place him who prospers through unrighteousness In gloom obscure ; and once among the unseen, There is no help for him.

Fame in excess is but a perilous thing; For on men's quivering eyes Is hurled by Zeus the blinding thunderbolt. I praise the good success That rouses not God's wrath."

The children find out. Yes ! Is not that true of thousands of our richest men, whose children pass miserable lives of selfish egoism, cynical in their excess of idle luxury, killing time as they can in amateur nothings, — weary of themselves, weary of the world, even if not steeped in drunkenness and vice ? Alas for the children of those whose houses are " overfiWed with precious store ahove the golden mean," — that golden mean which, through a wise and just distribution by means of a true science of economy and an organization of industry and all social appliances, might be the heritage of all. Another age, looking through a purer medium, shall brand many of our present arrangements and institutions as unrighteous as were those Athenian military expeditions, — so honorable then, so enriching to those who signalized themselves by cunning stratagem, by valorous deed, by a marvellous success.

4. Again, the social science of to-day busies itself with the question of health. The poet propounds the same problem: —

" Of high, o'erflowing health There is no limit fixed that satisfies ; For evermore disease, as neighbor close Whom but a wall divides, Upon it presses ; and man's prosperous state Moves on its course and strikes Upon an unseen rock."

This unseen rock science would get the soundings of, and mark its place upon the chart, even if it cannot, by means of gunpowder or yet more explosive substance, blow it to atoms. Chance, fate, necessity, no more rules there than it does in the lives and fortunes of men. But this the poet did not see. How many see it now? How many recognize health as the normal state, the

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possible possession of all, and disease as the selfimposed burden of ignorance and sin, — that inherited curse which shall last only so long as the house cleaves to Ate ; only so long as man, by his own wilful folly and voluntary transgression, invites the company of the avenging Fates?

S. Again, among the problems of to-day there is none more striking than that of the union of those who think themselves suffering great social wrongs, and who in their union find solace and strength. The great law of human fellowship, of like experience and a common destiny, binds them together. The fact itself is a significant sign; and the occasional excesses of a new-found strength should not blind us to the real importance and the essential necessity, in an advancing civilization, of this brotherhood of the suffering, this voicing of their complaints. Where is their hope, if not in themselves.'' It is, too, for the advantage of all that every wrong shall be righted, every evil removed ; that every faculty of every human being for enjoyment and improvement shall be unfolded to its full capacity and its utmost extent. Grudge not, then, this fellowship of suffering, aspiration, and effort. The ancient poet, by the intuition of genius, brings together from remote parts of the earth the two colossal sufferers by the tyranny of Zeus, — the frenzy-smitten lo and the tortured Prometheus. By an unconscious and invisible attraction, lo is brought to the rock to which the indomitable sufferer is nailed, and exclaims, —

SOAfE MODERN SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 2/

" Ah, who of all that suffer, born to woe, Have trouble like the pain that I endure ? But thou make clear to me What yet for me remains, — What remedy, what healing, for my pangs. Show me, if thou dost know ; Speak out and tell to me, The maid by wanderings vexed."

Prometheus unfolds the future to her by prophetic insight, and describes to her the course and ending of her untold torments, urging her to unfold "the tale of her great woe," saying, —

" To bewail and moan one's evil chance Here where one trusts to gain a pitying tear. From those who hear, — this is not labor lost."

It is a human touch which might, one would think, justify itself even to those purblind critics who call this an episode, and who would, had they been consulted, have created a better poem than that of .^schylus! But it needs no justification as an integral and vital part of the perfect fabric. It is the symbolic cry of the human heart for some sympathy with its woes, of that suffering in common which makes the whole world kin.

By the same sympathetic bond the strong Titan is drawn towards other sufferers. In the midst of his own pangs, he says: —

" Lp ! my mind is wearied with the grief Of that my kinsman, — Atlas, — who doth stand In the far west, supporting on his shoulders The pillars of the earth and heaven, — a burden

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His arms can ill but hold. I pity, too,

A helpless, powerless carcase, near the strait

Of the great sea, fast pressed beneath the roots

Of ancient ^Etna."

Yes: towards all these whom "the unsleeping thunder-bolt of Zeus " has struck down he is drawn with tenderest pity. So, on the bare heath, with the thunder bursting around him, and amidst the flashings of lightning and the tempest, the crazed Lear, before he accepts the shelter of the miserable hovel, expresses the new feeling of sympathy with the wretched : —

" Poor, naked wretches, wheresoe'er you are That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm. How shall your houseless heads and unfed sides, Your looped and windowed raggedness, defend you From seasons such as these ? Oh, I have ta'en Too little care of this. Take physic, Pomp ! Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel, That thou may'st shake the superflux to them. And show the heavens more just."

The heavens more just } Are the bountiful heavens to- blame "i Is not the earth fertile, and the means of good sufficient for all .? When the superflux shall be wisely distributed, will that dumb sorrow which pains so many hearts be turned into gladness, and those muttered curses that well up from so many quivering souls be changed into benedictions.

6. The last problem brought under our view is that of labor, — by many, indeed, regarded as the question which transcends all others, and which concerns more immediately and more intimately the well-being of humanity. What has ^schylus to do with that ? Is that embraced under his grand, symbolic picture? Why not? His theme in the " Prometheus " is the godlike element in man, — its protests, its struggles, and its final triumph; and how could it be that this force, labor, the application of man's strength of arm, of his power to work, of the employment of muscular vigor and all his bodily energies, — that this great necessity should not enter into his view? Humanity, or Prometheus with his unbending will, his far-reaching intelligence, his reckless love, is freed from the bird of Jove that daily feeds upon his liver by Hercules, whose heroic title was the labor of his own strong arm, his broad chest, his brawny muscles, his thick neck. He slays the ravaging lion, the venomous hydra, the savage wild boar, the death-dealing birds, the carnivorous monsters; cleanses the Augean stables, and finally brings up from hell itself its fearful guardian. Intelligence by itself alone is fettered, is powerless ; but intellect and labor combined are the essentials of human progress. And how was this labor-hero, this god of work, equipped foi: his task ? He received his helmet from Minerva, his sword from Mercury, his horse from Neptune, his arrows from Apollo, and his golden cuirass from Vulcan. That is, labor — endowed, equipped, furnished with the gifts, the graces, the appliances of art, of commerce, of intelligent skill — frees humanity from its evils and its foes in the air above and on the earth, and even from the hell under the earth.