Interpretations of Poetry and ReligionSantayana, George
Religion
Interpretations of Poetry and Religion
Santayana, George
Aesthetics; Literature -- History and criticism; Poetry; Religion
Finally, as a third element, we find the religion of the priests,
soothsayers, and magicians, as well as the rites of Orpheus, Bacchus,
and the Great Goddesses at Eleusis. These forms of worship showed
Oriental affinities and partook of a kind of nocturnal horror and
mystical enthusiasm. They were the Greek representatives of the
religion of revelation and of sacraments, and bore much the same
relation to the supernaturalistic elements in Christianity as does
the idea of a shade in Hades to the idea of a soul in heaven. The
fundamental intuitions were the same, but in Pagan times they remained
vague, doubtful, and incoherent.
These three forms of religion lay together in men's minds and habits
throughout the formative period of Greek literature. There was an
occasional rivalry among them, but the tolerance characteristic
of Paganism could reconcile their claims without much difficulty,
and admit them all to a share of honour. The history of the three
elements, however, differs essentially, as might be expected after a
consideration of their respective natures. The antique family religion
lived by inertia; it was obeyed without being justified theoretically,
and remained strong by its very obscurity. Many customs which a man
may have occasion to conform to only once or twice in his life endure
for ages and survive the ebb and flow of intellectual and political
systems. Nursery tales, trivial superstitions, customs connected
with weddings or funerals, or with certain days of the year, have a
strange and irrational persistence; they surprise us by emerging into
prominence after centuries of a sort of subterraneous existence. Thus
the deification of Roman emperors was not the sacrilegious innovation
which it might appear to be, but on the contrary a restoration of the
spirit of the most ancient faith, a revival called to the aid of a new
polity by the mingled statecraft and superstition of the times. Thus,
too, the Christian care in the burial of the dead (contrary as it is to
the theoretical spiritualism of Christianity), the feast of All Souls,
and the prayers for the departed are evidences of the same latent human
religion underlying the cosmic flights and public controversies of
theology.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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