The daily dispatch. [volume] (Richmond [Va.]) 1850-1884, 1873-06-17
faultless and superb emanation Of the liter.

1ently an age Of faith. The idea of ever
present Deity was the supreme passion of the
soul and as the intellect was not yet ripe for
he transcendant conception of the one God,
The Greek Imagination could not otherwise
express its spiritual instinct of Providence
than By the creation ola mythology wherein
a distinct divinity presided over all the ope-
rations of nature and all the deStinies Of hui
manity. The sun was the eye ofZeus, and
no act or thought of man was yelled from the
scrutiny Of his all-seeing intelligence. Earth,
air, ocean were peopled with supernal pow
crs, and deity was TO be propItiated in all
the passages of life. Nor was this world the
exclusive theatre Of human existence or of
Divine Providence but after death man
survived in another scene, where a Minos
or Rhadamanthus distributed retributlve
Justice.
This faith in an all-pervading Providence.
and this fear Of posthumous responsibility,
was vocal in the poesy, and visible in the
art, and formulated in the philosophy, and
operative in the conduct of the primitive
Greek people. Their religion was the we'll
spring of all their aesthetics and Of all their
heroic achievements and though the light
of it be ecipsed BY purer and brighter
revelation, yet the memorial of its power
still survives, In the marble of the Parthe-
non, in the song of the bard, in the story OF
ThermopyfG. But this was the cultus Of
the childhood of man, and in the maturity
OF his intellect he rejected it as frivolous gu
perstition. Not yet was the fulncss of time,
when in the counsels of infinite wisdom hui
mainly was to be helped with the final and the
perfect faith. Hence, in the interval between
the decay of the old and the advent of the
new religion, there was period of blank I'M
belief in the life of the Hellenic nation and
behold how, for lack of light, for want of
faith, from loss Of hope, everything of beau
ty in the literature of Greece, everything Of
grace in its art, all of truth in its philosophy,
all Of heroism in its character, withered and
vanished under the blight OF an all-destroy.
ing skepticism
At this juncture one man came conspicu-
ously forward to stay the tide of demorali-
zation which threatened to engulf the Hell
lenic race. Standing on the summit of intel
lectual eminence, he appeared to catch a
herald ray of the dawning revelation, and
he strove to communicate to his country
men the illumination with which his own
genius was enlightened. With an incom-
parable power Of dialectic, and in accents of
pathetic entreaty, he at once exploded the
vain philosophy of the schools, and urged
the people of Attica upon life of higher
and holier aspiration. AS we read the
" Phaedo" and the Memorabilia" we seem
to hear by anticipa On the protest now SO
audible among the wise and good of this
present hme-thc warning Of prophetic
intelligence against the arrogance Of human
reason. But in vain did he laugh the scorn
subtleties of the sophists; in vain did he
expose the fatality OF physical science as a
substitute for Divine Providence; in vain did
be laborIto replace the frivolities ofskepticism
by faith in the awful realities of life and i'm
mortality. Not until the advent of another
and greater than Socrates was the WORT to
be gladdened by the sunshine of spiritual
presence.
I SO Greece fell, from exhaustion of vital
force, under the dominion of race with
whom the religious principle was still an ac-
tual and operative power. But the van
pushed were more than avenged by the con-
taSion of skeptcism they communicated to
the victor; for soon the meretricious charms
of the Greek philosophy lured away the vo.
taries OF the ancient rites, and the temples
were deserted for the schools. Zeno and
Eplcurus divided between them the empire
of the Roman mind and the refnements of
speculation sophisticated the simplicity OF
the primitive Roman faith-of that faith
which had schooled the nascent nation to
accept the institutes oflaw and polty as Il di-
vine revelation which impaired whatsoever
OF originality and enthusiasm the Latin lite
nature exhibits; which disciplined the aus.
tere integrity of the old Roman character
that faith, in short, which impelled the i'm
perial people upon career of conquest and
civilization unparalleled in the history of the
human race. a..
The inspirations of religion as guide and
motive to man were superseded by the eX-
coSitations of reason-the divorce between
the intellect and the soul was complete and
irrcconcilable. Nay, rather, the spiritual
element OF mans nature was extinguished-
all the poetry torn from the context of biz
life. and himself cast adrift, with no light but
his own faint intelligence to iIlumine the path
OF destiny. Looking back upon that forlorr
people in that tatherless and forsaken age
we may see IN what catastrophe the purely
secular philosophy inevitably terminates
Starting from the common postulate of unbe
lle1 IN the spiritual faculty, the Stole and The
Eplcurean equally, though in different ways
accomplished the mutilation OF man. The
latter, skeptlcal Of all save the testimony o.
sense, made the pursuit Of pleasure the guide
OF human conduct. and lnculcated a refined
materallsm as mans highest culture. The
Stole, less GroVeling, took his stand on the
intellectual powers, and BY the unassisteG
efforts of reason developed philosophy
which he propoundeu as sufficient for the
solution of all the perplexities of humanity.
But reason, after all, is subordinate prin
ciple in mans nature, and, alone, is quite in
capable of resisting either the solicitations Of
sense or the Illusions of the soul. Hence
while the Stole philosophy issued in lessons
of sublime self-sacritice, it never became
more than the pedantry of Il school.
The mass Of mankind were untouched by
its allstcrity; and even the select few who
proleSsed it in principle too often betraJe
it in practice.
Cato was no less iDhuman in inflitting suf-
fering upon others than heroic in enduring
it himself. ~.
Brutus is as celebrated for expressing the
poor rs for love Of liberty. Marcus Aureljus
illustrated the benignity of his precepts Ly
the merciIess persecution of the Christians.
Sallust, who so gracefully extolled the severe
simplicity of the Stole life, revelled in all the
riot of sensual indulgence. With the same
pen that traced his stately defamation ON
the beauty of virtue, Seneca indiled an apo
logy for parricide. Lucan's lofty spirit did
not disdain the tribute Of adulation to Nero
And Cicero, who protested an eclecticism
culled from the choicest ethics OF all the
schools, who enunciated principles of moral
conduct that challenge the admiration of all
ages-Cicero, the sage of the De 0ticits, Is
the shameless profigate Of the Letters to
Atticus the serene soul of the careless Epi.
curean heaves with the agonies Of mortified
vanity, and the stern Stole, whose spirit was
strung to the highest tension of invlnclble
fortitude, bewaiis himselfin exile in accents
of ludicrous lamentatiop. Thus The Stole
however beautiful in Specula-