The Poetical Works of Thomas Moore :: :: University of Virginia Library

'Twas on the Red Sea coast, at morn, we met
The venerable man ; a healthy bloom
Mingled its softness with the vigorous thought
That tower'd upon his brow; and, when he spoke,
'Twas language sweeten'd into song—such holy sounds
As oft, they say, the wise and virtuous hear,

168

Prelusive to the harmony of heaven,
When death is nigh ; and still, as he unclos'd
His sacred lips, an odour, all as bland
As ocean-breezes gather from the flowers
That blossom in elyseum , breath'd around.
With silent awe we listen'd, while he told
Of the dark veil which many an age had hung
O'er Nature's form, till, long explored by man,
The mystic shroud grew thin and luminous,
And glimpses of that heavenly form shone through:—
Of magic wonders, that were known and taught
By him (or Cham or Zoroaster named)
Who mus'd amid the mighty cataclysm,
O'er his rude tablets of primeval lore ;
And gathering round him, in the sacred ark,

169

The mighty secrets of that former globe,
Let not the living star of science sink
Beneath the waters, which ingulph'd a world!—
Of visions, by Calliope reveal'd
To him , who trac'd upon his typic lyre

170

The diapason of man's mingled frame,
And the grand Doric heptachord of heaven.
With all of pure, of wondrous and arcane,
Which the grave sons of Mochus, many a night,
Told to the young and bright-hair'd visitant
Of Carmel's sacred mount. —Then, in a flow

171

Of calmer converse, he beguil'd us on
Through many a maze of Garden and of Porch,

172

Through many a system, where the scatter'd light
Of heavenly truth lay, like a broken beam

173

From the pure sun, which, though refracted all
Into a thousand hues, is sunshine still ,

174

And bright through every change!—he spoke of Him,
The lone , eternal One, who dwells above,

175

And of the soul's untraceable descent
From that high fount of spirit, through the grades

176

Of intellectual being, till it mix
With atoms vague, corruptible, and dark;

177

Nor yet ev'n then, though sunk in earthly dross,
Corrupted all, nor its ethereal touch

178

Quite lost, but tasting of the fountain still.
As some bright river, which has roll'd along
Through meads of flowery light and mines of gold,
When pour'd at length into the dusky deep,
Disdains to take at once its briny taint,
But keeps unchanged awhile the lustrous tinge,
Or balmy freshness, of the scenes it left.

And here the old man ceased—a winged train
Of nymphs and genii bore him from our eyes.
The fair illusion fled! and, as I wak'd,

179

'Twas clear that my rapt soul had roamed, the while,
To that bright realm of dreams, that spirit-world,
Which mortals know by its long track of light
O'er midnight's sky, and call the Galaxy.

In Plutarch's Essay on the Decline of the Oracles, Cleombrotus, one of the interlocutors, describes an extraordinary man whom he had met with, after long research, upon the banks of the Red Sea. Once in every year this supernatural personage appeared to mortals, and conversed with them: the rest of his time he passed among the Genii and the Nymphs. Περι την ερυθραν θαλασσαν ευρον, ανθρωποις ανα παν ετος απαξ εντυγχανοντα, ταλλα δε συν ταις νυμφαις, νομασι και δαιμοσι, ως εφασκε. He spoke in a tone not far removed from singing, and whenever he opened his lips, a fragrance filled the place: φθεγγομενου δε τον τοπον ευωδια κατειχε, του στοματος ηδιστον αποπνεοντος. From him Cleombrotus learned the doctrine of a plurality of worlds.

The celebrated Janus Dousa, a little before his death, imagined that he heard a strain of music in the air. See the poem of Heinsius “In harmoniam quam paulo ante obitum audire sibi visus est Dousa.” Page 501.

------ενθα μακαρων
νασον ωκεανιδες
αυραι περιπνεουσιν: αν-
θεμα δε χρυσου φλεγει.

Pindar. Olymp. ii.

Cham, the son of Noah, is supposed to have taken with him into the ark the principal doctrines of magical, or rather of natural, science, which he had inscribed upon some very durable substances, in order that they might resist the ravages of the deluge, and transmit the secrets of antediluvian knowledge to his posterity. See the extracts made by Bayle, in his article, Cham. The identity of Cham and Zoroaster depends upon the authority of Berosus (or rather the impostor Annius), and a few more such respectable testimonies. See Naudé's Apologie pour les Grands Hommes, &c. chap viii., where he takes more trouble than is necessary in refuting this gratuitous supposition.

Chamum à posteris hujus artis admiratoribus Zoroastrum, seu vivum astrum, propterea fuisse dictum et pro Deo habitum. —Bochart. Geograph. Sacr. lib. iv. cap. 1.

Orpheus.—Paulinus, in his Hebdomades, cap. 2. lib. iii. has endeavoured to show, after the Platonists, that man is a diapason, or octave, made up of a diatesseron, which is his soul, and a diapente, which is his body. Those frequent allusions to music, by which the ancient philosophers illustrated their sublime theories, must have tended very much to elevate the character of the art, and to enrich it with associations of the grandest and most interesting nature. See a preceding note, for their ideas upon the harmony of the spheres. Heraclitus compared the mixture of good and evil in this world, to the blended varieties of harmony in a musical instrument (Plutarch. de Animæ Procreat.); and Euryphamus, the Pythagorean, in a fragment preserved by Stobæus, describes human life, in its perfection, as a sweet and well tuned lyre. Some of the ancients were so fanciful as to suppose that the operations of the memory were regulated by a kind of musical cadence, and that ideas occurred to it “per arsin et thesin,” while others converted the whole man into a mere harmonized machine, whose motion depended upon a certain tension of the body, analogous to that of the strings in an instrument. Cicero indeed ridicules Aristoxenus for this fancy, and says, “Let him teach singing, and leave philosophy to Aristotle;” but Aristotle himself, though decidedly opposed to the harmonic speculations of the Pythagoreans and Platonists, could sometimes condescend to enliven his doctrines by reference to the beauties of musical science; as, in the treatise Περι κοσμου attributed to him, Καθαπερ δε εν χορω, κορυφαιου καταρξαντος, κ. τ. λ.

The Abbé Batteux, in his enquiry into the doctrine of the Stoics, attributes to those philosophers the same mode of illustration. “L'âme étoit cause active ποιειν αιτιος; le corps cause passive ηδε του πασχειν:—l'une agissant dans l'autre; et y prenant, par son action même, un caractère, des formes, des modifications, qu'elle n'avoit pas par elle-même; à peu près comme l'air, qui, chassé dans un instrument de musique, fait connoître, par les différens sons qu'il produit, les différentes modifications qu'il y reçoit.” See a fine simile founded upon this notion in Cardinal Polignac's poem, lib 5. v.734.

Phythagoras is represented in Iamblichus as descending with great solemnity from Mount Carmel, for which reason the Carmelites have claimed him as one of their fraternity. This Mochus or Moschus, with the descendants of whom Phythagoras conversed in Phœnicia, and from whom he derived the doctrines of atomic philosophy, is supposed by some to be the same with Moses. Huett has adopted this idea, Démonstration Evangélique, Prop. iv. chap. 2. § 7.; and Le Clerc, amongst others, has refuted it. See Biblioth. Choisie, tom. i. p. 75. It is certain, however, that the doctrine of atoms was known and promulgated long before Epicurus. “With the fountains of Democritus,” says Cicero, “the gardens of Epicurus were watered;” and the learned author of the Intellectual System has shown, that all the early philosophers, till the time of Plato, were atomists. We find Epicurus, however, boasting that his tenets were new and unborrowed, and perhaps few among the ancients had any stronger claim to originality. In truth, if we examine their schools of philosophy, notwithstanding the peculiarities which seem to distinguish them from each other, we may generally observe that the difference is but verbal and trifling; and that, among those various and learned heresies, there is scarcely one to be selected, whose opinions are its own, original and exclusive. The doctrine of the world's eternity may be traced through all the sects. The continual metempsychosis of Pythagoras, the grand periodic year of the Stoics, (at the conclusion of which the universe is supposed to return to its original order, and commence a new revolution,) the successive dissolution and combination of atoms maintained by the Epicureans—all these tenets are but different intimations of the same general belief in the eternity of the world. As explained by St. Austin, the periodic year of the Stoics disagrees only so far with the idea of the Pythagoreans, that instead of an endless transmission of the soul through a variety of bodies, it restores the same body and soul to repeat their former round of existence, so that the “identical Plato, who lectured in the Academy of Athens, shall again and again, at certain intervals, during the lapse of eternity, appear in the same Academy and resume the same functions—” ------ sic eadem tempora temporaliumque rerum volumina repeti, ut v. g. sicut in isto sæculo Plato philosophus in urbe Atheniensi, in eâ scholâ quæ Academia dicta est, discipulos docuit, ita per innumerabilia retro sæcula, multum plexis quidem intervallis, sed certis, et idem Plato, et eadem civitas, eademque schola, iidemque discipuli repetiti et per innumerabilia deinde sæcula repetendi sint. —De Civitat. Dei, lib. xii. cap. 13. Vanini, in his dialogues, has given us a similar explication of the periodic revolutions of the world. “Eâ de causâ, qui nunc sunt in usu ritus, centies millies fuerunt, totiesque renascentur quoties ceciderunt.” 52.

The paradoxical notions of the Stoics upon the beauty, the riches, the dominion of their imaginary sage, are among the most distinguishing characteristics of their school, and, according to their advocate Lipsius, were peculiar to that sect. “Priora illa (decreta) quæ passim in philosophantium scholis ferè obtinent, ista quæ peculiaria huic sectæ et habent contradictionem: i. e. paradoxa.” —Manuduct. ad Stoic. Philos. lib. iii. dissertat. 2. But it is evident (as the Abbé Garnier has remarked, Mémoires de l'Acad. tom. xxxv.) that even these absurdities of the Stoics are borrowed, and that Plato is the source of all their extravagant paradoxes. We find their dogma, “dives qui sapiens,” (which Clement of Alexandria has transferred from the Philosopher to the Christian, Pædagog. lib. iii. cap. 6.) expressed in the prayer of Socrates at the end of the Phædrus. Ο φιλε Παν τε και αλλοι οσοι τηδε θεοι, δοιητε μοι καλω γενεσθαι τανδοθεν: ταξωθεν δε οσα εχω, τοις εντος ειναι μοι φιλια: πλουσιον δε νομιζοιμι τον σοφον. And many other instances might be adduced from the Αντερασται, the Πολιτικος, &c. to prove that these weeds of paradox were all gathered among the bowers of the Academy. Hence it is that Cicero, in the preface to his Paradoxes, calls them Socratica; and Lipsius, exulting in the patronage of Socrates, says “Ille totus est noster.” This is indeed a coalition, which evinces as much as can be wished the confused similitude of ancient philosophical opinions: the father of scepticism is here enrolled amongst the founders of the Portico; he, whose best knowledge was that of his own ignorance, is called in to authorise the pretensions of the most obstinate dogmatists in all antiquity.

Rutilius, in his Itinerarium, has riduculed the sabbath of the Jews, as “lassati mollis imago Dei;” but Epicurus gave an eternal holyday to his gods, and, rather than disturb the slumbers of Olympus, denied at once the interference of a Providence. He does not, however, seem to have been singular in this opinion. Theophilus of Antioch, if he deserve any credit, imputes a similar belief to Pythagoras:—φησι (Πυθαγορασ) τε των παντων θεους ανθρωπων μηδεν φροντιζειν. And Plutarch, though so hostile to the followers of Epicurus, has unaccountably adopted the very same theological error. Thus, after quoting the opinions of Anaxagoras and Plato upon divinity, he adds, Κοινως ουν αμαρτανουσιν αμφοτεροι. οτι τον θεον εποιησαν επιστεφομενον των ανθρωπινων. —De Placit. Philosoph. lib. i. cap. 7. Plato himself has attributed a degree of indifference to the gods, which is not far removed from the apathy of Epicurus's heaven; as thus, in his Philebus, where Protarchus asks, Ουκουν εικος γε ουτε χαιρειν θεους, ουτε το εναντιον; and Socrates answers, Πανυ μεν ουν εικος, ασχημον γουν αυτων εκατερον γιγνομενον εστιν;—while Aristotle supposes a still more absurd neutrality, and concludes, by no very flattering analogy, that the deity is as incapable of virtue as of vice. Και γαρ ωσπερ ουδεν θηριου εστι κακια, ουδ' αρετη, ουτως ουδε θεου. —Ethic. Nicomach. lib. vii. cap. 1. In truth, Aristotle, upon the subject of Providence, was little more correct than Epicurus. He supposed the moon to be the limit of divine interference, excluding of course this sublunary world from its influence. The first definition of the world, in his treatise Περι Κοσμου (if this treatise be really the work of Aristotle) agrees, almost verbum verbo, with that in the letter of Epicurus to Pythocles; and both omit the mention of a deity. In his Ethics, too, he intimates a doubt whether the gods feel any interest in the concerns of mankind.—Ει γαρ τις επιμελεια των ανθρωπινων υπο θεων γινεται. It is true, he adds Ωσπερ δοκει, but even this is very sceptical.

In these erroneous conceptions of Aristotle, we trace the cause of that general neglect which his philosophy experienced among the early Christians. Plato is seldom much more orthodox, but the obscure enthusiasm of his style allowed them to accommodate all his fancies to their own purpose. Such glowing steel was easily moulded, and Platonism became a sword in the hands of the fathers.

The Providence of the Stoics, so vaunted in their school, was a power as contemptibly inefficient as the rest. All was fate in the system of the Portico. The chains of destiny were thrown over Jupiter himself, and their deity was like the Borgia of the epigrammatist, “et Cæsar et nihil.” Not even the language of Seneca can reconcile this degradation of divinity. “Ille ipse omnium conditor ac rector scripsit quidam fata, sed sequitur; semper paret, semel jussit.” —Lib. de Providentiâ, cap. 5.

With respect to the difference between the Stoics, Peripatetics, and Academicians, the following words of Cicero prove that he saw but little to distinguish them from each other:— “Peripateticos et Academicos, nominibus differentes, re congruentes; a quibus Stoici ipsi verbis magis quam sententiis dissenserunt.” —Academic. lib. ii. 5.; and perhaps what Reid has remarked upon one of their points of controversy might be applied as effectually to the reconcilement of all the rest. “The dispute between the Stoics and Peripatetics was probably all for want of definition. The one said they were good under the control of reason, the other that they should be eradicated.” —Essay, vol. iii. In short, it appears a no less difficult matter to establish the boundaries of opinion between any two of the philosophical sects, than it would be to fix the landmarks of those estates in the moon, which Ricciolus so generously allotted to his brother astronomers. Accordingly we observe some of the greatest men of antiquity passing without scruple from school to school, according to the fancy or convenience of the moment. Cicero, the father of Roman philosophy, is sometimes an Academician, sometimes a Stoic; and, more than once, he acknowledges a conformity with Epicurus; “non sine causa igitur Epicurus ausus est dicere semper in pluribus bonis esse sapientem, quia semper sit in voluptatibus.” —Tusculan. Quæst. lib. v. Though often pure in his theology, Cicero sometimes smiles at futurity as a fiction; thus, in his Oration for Cluentius, speaking of punishments in the life to come, he says, “Quæ si falsa sunt, id quod omnes intelligunt, quid ei tandem aliud mors eripuit, præter sensum doloris?”:—though here we should, perhaps, do him but justice by agreeing with his commentator Sylvius, who remarks upon this passage, “Hæc autem dixit, ut causæ suæ subserviret.” The poet, Horace, roves like a butterfly through the schools, and now wings along the walls of the Porch, now basks among the flowers of the Garden; while Virgil, with a tone of mind strongly philosophical, has yet left us wholly uncertain as to the sect which he espoused. The balance of opinion declares him to have been an Epicurean, but the ancient author of his life asserts that he was an Academician; and we trace through his poetry the tenets of almost all the leading sects. The same kind of eclectic indifference is observable in most of the Roman writers. Thus Propertius, in the fine elegy to Cynthia, on his departure for Athens,

Illic vel studiis animum emendare Platonis,
Incipiam, aut hortis, docte Epicure, tuis.

Lib. iii. Eleg. 21.

Though Broeckhusius here reads, “dux Epicure,” which seems to fix the poet under the banners of Epicurus. Even the Stoic Seneca, whose doctrines have been considered so orthodox, that St. Jerome has ranked him amongst the ecclesiastical writers, while Boccaccio doubts (in consideration of his supposed correspondence with St. Paul) whether Dante should have placed him in Limbo with the rest of the Pagans —even the rigid Seneca has bestowed such commendations on Epicurus, that if only those passages of his works were preserved to us, we could not hesitate, I think, in pronouncing him a confirmed Epicurean. With similar inconsistency, we find Porphyry, in his work upon abstinence, referring to Epicurus as an example of the most strict Pythagorean temperance; and Lancelotti (the author of “Farfalloni degli antici Istorici”) has been seduced by this grave reputation of Epicurus into the absurd error of associating him with Chrysippus, as a chief of the Stoic school. There is no doubt, indeed, that however the Epicurean sect might have relaxed from its original purity, the morals of its founder were as correct as those of any among the ancient philosophers; and his doctrines upon pleasure, as explained in the letter to Menœceus, are rational, amiable, and consistent with our nature. A late writer, De Sablons, in his Grands Hommes venés, expresses strong indignation against the Encyclopédistes for their just and animated praises of Epicurus, and discussing the question, “si ce philosophe étoit vertueux,” denies it upon no other authority than the calumnies collected by Plutarch, who himself confesses that, on this particular subject, he consulted only opinion and report, without pausing to investigate their truth.—Αλλα την δοξαν, ου την αληθειαν σκοπουμεν. To the factious zeal of his illiberal rivals, the Stoics, Epicurus chiefly owed these gross misrepresentations of the life and opinions of himself and his associates, which, notwithstanding the learned exertions of Gassendi, have still left an odium on the name of his philosophy; and we ought to examine the ancient accounts of this philosopher with about the same degree of cautious belief which, in reading ecclesiastical history, we yield to the invectives of the fathers against the heretics,—trusting as little to Plutarch upon a dogma of Epicurus, as we would to the vehement St. Cyril upon a tenet of Nestorius. (1801.)

The preceding remarks, I wish the reader to observe, were written at a time, when I thought the studies to which they refer much more important as well as more amusing than, I freely confess, they appear to me at present.

Lactantius asserts that all the truths of Christianity may be found dispersed through the ancient philosophical sects, and that any one who would collect these scattered fragments of orthodoxy might form a code in no respect differing from that of the Christian. “Si extitisset aliquis, qui veritatem sparsam per singulos per sectasque diffusam colligeret in unum, ac redigeret in corpus, is profecto non dissentiret a nobis.” —Inst. lib. vi. c. 7.

To Το μονον και ερημον.

This bold Platonic image I have taken from a passage in Father Bouchet's letter upon the Metempsychosis, inserted in Picart's Cérém. Relig. tom. iv.

According to Pythagoras, the people of Dreams are souls collected together in the Galaxy.—Δημος δε ονειρων, κατα Πυθαγοραν, αι ψυχαι ας συναγεσθαι φησιν εις τον γαλαξιαν. —Porphyr. de Antro Nymph.