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PARERGA AND PARALIPOMENA: SHORT PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAYS |
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[b]CHAPTER 17: Some Archaeological Observations[/b]
§ 191
The name Pelasger, undoubtedly connected with Pelagus, is the general description for the small isolated Asiatic tribes who were supplanted and dispersed, and were the first to reach Europe, where they soon entirely forgot their native culture, tradition, and religion. On the other hand, favourably influenced by a fine and temperate climate and good soil as also by the many coasts of Greece and Asia Minor, they attained, under the name of the Hellenes, a perfectly natural evolution and purely human culture whose perfection has never occurred elsewhere. Accordingly, they had nothing but a half-comic, childlike religion; seriousness took refuge in the Mysteries and the tragedy. To that Greek nation alone are we indebted for a correct interpretation and natural presentation of the human form and features, for the discovery of the only correct and regular proportions of architecture, fixed by them for all time, for the development of all genuine forms of poetry together with the invention of really beautiful metres, for the establishment of philosophical systems in all the main directions of human thought, for the elements of mathematics, for the foundations of a rational legislation, and generally for the normal presentation of a truly fine and noble human existence. For this select little people of the Muses and Graces was, so to speak, endowed with an instinct for beauty which extended to everything, to faces, forms, postures, dress, weapons, buildings, vessels, implements, utensils, and so forth, and never on any occasion forsook them. We shall, therefore, always be remote from the canons of good taste and beauty to the extent that we remove ourselves from the influence of the Greeks, especially in sculpture and architecture. The ancients will never become obsolete; they are and remain the lodestar for all our efforts, whether in literature or the plastic arts, and we must never lose sight of this. Discredit and disgrace await the age that dares to set aside the ancients. If, therefore, some perverted, wretched, and materially minded 'modern age' [1] should desert the ancient school in order to feel more at ease in its overweening presumption, then it is sowing the seeds of ignomy and dishonour.
We may possibly characterize the spirit qf the ancients by saying that, as a rule, they tried in all things to keep as near as possible to nature; whereas the spirit of modern times might be characterized as an attempt to get as far from her as possible. Consider the dress, customs, implements, dwellings, vessels, art, religion, and mode of life of the ancients and of the moderns.
On the other hand, the Greeks are far behind us in mechanical and technical arts as well as in all branches of natural science, for such things require time, patience, method, and experience rather than high intellectual powers. And so from most of the works on natural science by the ancients there is little we can learn except to realize what they did not know. Whoever wants to know how incredibly ignorant in physics and physiology the ancients were, should read the Problemata Aristotelis; they are a real specimen ignorantiae veterum. [2] It is true that the problems are often correctly, and sometimes cleverly, conceived, but the solutions are for the most part pathetic because he knows no elements of explanation except always [x]. [3]
Like the ancient Germans, the Greeks were a race which had immigrated from Asia into Europe, a nomadic tribe; and, remote from their native lands, both educated themselves entirely from their own resources. But see what the Greeks became and what the ancient Germans! Just compare, for example, their mythologies; for the Greeks later established their poetry and philosophy on their mythology; their first teachers were the ancient minstrels Orpheus, Musaeus, Amphion, Linus, and finally Homer. Then came the Seven Wise Men and finally the philosophers. Thus the Greeks, so to speak, went through the three classes of their school; there is no mention of such a thing among the ancient Germans before the migration.
No ancient German literature, or Nibelungen, or other poets of the Middle Ages should be taught in German gymnasia. It is true that these things are well worth noting and reading, but they do not contribute to the cultivation of taste and take up time that should be devoted to ancient and really classical literature. Now, my noble German patriots, if you put ancient German doggerel in place of Greek and Roman classics, you will rear none but lazy and idle loungers. To compare these Nibelungen with the Iliad is rank blasphemy from which the ears of youth, more than anything else, should be spared.
§ 192
The Ode of Orpheus in the First Book of the Eclogues of Stobaeus is Indian pantheism, playfully embellished by the plastic sense of the Greeks. It is, of course, not by Orpheus, yet it is old; for a part of it is already mentioned in the pseudo- Aristotelean De mundo, a book that has recently been attributed to Chrysippus. It might well be based on something genuinely Orphean; in fact one feels tempted to regard it as a document of the transition of Indian religion to Hellenistic polytheism. In any case, we can take it as an antidote to the much-lauded hymn of Cleanthes to Zeus, which is given in the same book and has an unmistakable Jewish odour, and thus gives so much pleasure. I can never believe that Cleanthes, a Stoic and so a pantheist, made this nauseous adulation, but suspect that the author was some Alexandrian Jew. At all events, it is not right so to misuse the name of the son of Kronos.
Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos express the same fundamental idea as Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva; but this idea is too natural for us to have to infer for that reason a historical relationship.
§ 193
In Homer the many phrases, metaphors, similes, and expressions, occurring without end, are inserted so stiffly, rigidly, and mechanically, as though this had been done by routine and rule of thumb.
§ 194
The fact that poetry is older than prose, since Pherecydes was the first to write philosophy and Hecataeus of Miletus * the first to write history in prose, and that this was regarded by the ancients as a memorable occasion, may be explained as follows. Before men wrote at all, they tried to perpetuate, unadulterated, facts and ideas worth preserving by recording them in verse. Now when they began to write, it was natural for them to put down everything in verse, for they simply did not know that memorable occasions were preserved in any other way than in verse. Those first prose-writers departed from this as from something that had become superfluous.
§ 194a
Freemasonry is the sole vestige, or rather analogue, of the Mysteries of the Greeks. Admission into it is the [x] [4] and the [x]; [5] what is learnt are the [x], [6] and the different degrees are the [x]. [7] Such analogy is neither accidental nor hereditary, but is due to the thing springing from human nature. With the Mohammedans Sufism is an analogue of the Mysteries. As the Romans had no Mysteries of their own, people were initiated into those of foreign gods, especially of Isis, whose religious cult reached Rome at an early date.
§ 195
Our clothes have a certain influence on almost all our attitudes, gestures, and bearing. The ancients were not similarly influenced by theirs, for they were probably induced, in keeping with their aesthetic sense, by the feeling of such a drawback to keep their clothing loose and not tight-fitting. For this reason, when an actor wears an antique costume, he has to avoid all the movements and attitudes which are in any way caused by our clothes and have then become a habit. There is, therefore, no need for him to assume an air of puffed-up pomposity, as does a French buffoon when playing his Racine in toga and tunic.
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[b]Notes:[/b]
1 (Schopenhauer uses the cacophonous word Jetztzeit, which he often condemns.]
2 ['Specimen of the ignorance of the ancients'.]
3 ['Hot and cold, dry and moist'.]
* Herodotus mentions him in another connection, VI. 137.
4 ['To be initiated'.]
5 ['Initiations'; 'mystic rites'.]
6 [' Mysteries'.]
7 [' Small, greater, and greatest mysteries'.] |