酷兔英语
    当前位置:
  1. 首页
  2. 文章
  3. 娱乐英语
  4. 原版小说
  5. 正文

Letters on Literature-Part8_ANDREW LANG(1844-1912)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

0 收藏 0 分享 0 赞

章节正文
文章总共2页
books on the philosophy and the mythology and the ritual of the

classic peoples, we hear about their religion in the modern sense



scarcely anything from anybody. We know very well what gods they

worshipped, and what sacrifices they offered to the Olympians, and



what stories they told about their deities, and about the beginnings

of things. We know, too, in a general way, that the gods were



interested in morality. They would all punish offences in their own

department, at least when it was a case of numine laeso, when the



god who protected the hearth was offended by breach of hospitality,

or when the gods invoked to witness an oath were offended by



perjury.

But how did a religiously minded man regard the gods? What hope or



what fears did he entertain with regard to the future life? Had he

any sense of sin, as more than a thing that could be expiated by



purification with the blood of slaughtered swine, or by purchasing

the prayers and "masses," so to speak, of the mendicant clergy or



charlatans, mentioned by Plato in the "Republic"? About these great

questions of the religious life--the Future and man's fortunes in



the future, the punishment or reward of justice or iniquity--we

really know next to nothing.



That is one reason why the great poem of Lucretius seems so valuable

to me. The De Rerum Natura was written for no other purpose than to



destroy Religion, as Lucretius understood it, to free men's minds

from all dread as to future punishment, all hope of Heaven, all



dread or desire for the interference of the gods in this mortal life

of ours on earth. For no other reason did Lucretius desire to "know



the causes of things," except that the knowledge would bring

"emancipation," as people call it, from the gods, to whom men had



hitherto stood in the relation of the Roman son to the Roman sire,

under the patria potestas or in manu patris.



As Lucretius wrought all his arduous work to this end, it follows

that his fellow-countrymen must have gone in a constantterror about



spiritual penalties, which we seldom associate in thought with the

"blithe" and carelessexistence of the ancient peoples. In every



line of Lucretius you read the joy and the indignation of the slave

just escaped from an intolerable thraldom to fear. Nobody could



well have believed on any other evidence that the classical people

had a gloomy Calvinism of their own time. True, as early as Homer,



we hear of the shadowyexistence of the souls, and of the torments

endured by the notablywicked; by impious ghosts, or tyrannical,



like Sisyphus and Tantalus. But when we read the opening books of

the "Republic," we find the educated friends of Socrates treating



these terrors as old-wives' fables. They have heard, they say, that

such notions circulate among the people, but they seem never for a



moment to have themselves believed in a future of rewards and

punishments.



The remains of ancient funereal art, in Etruria or Attica, usually

show us the semblances of the dead lying at endless feasts, or



receiving sacrifices of food and wine (as in Egypt) from their

descendants, or, perhaps, welcoming the later dead, their friends



who have just rejoined them. But it is only in the descriptions by

Pausanias and others of certain old wall-paintings that we hear of



the torments of the wicked, of the demons that torture them and,

above all, of the great chief fiend, coloured like a carrion fly.



To judge from Lucretius, although so little remains to us of this

creed, yet it had a very strong hold of the minds of people, in the



century before Christ. Perhaps the belief was reinforced by the

teaching of Socrates, who, in the vision of Er, in the "Republic,"



brings back, in a myth, the old popular faith in a Purgatorio, if

not in an Inferno.



In the "Phaedo," for certain, we come to the very definite account

of a Hell, a place of eternalpunishment, as well as of a Purgatory,



whence souls are freed when their sins are expiated. "The spirits

beyond redemption, for the multitude of their murders or sacrileges,



Fate hurls into Tartarus, whence they never any more come forth."




文章总共2页
文章标签:名著  

章节正文
Copyright © 2023 Qeto All rights reserved.
商务合作 | 联系我们 | 关于我们 | 版权声明 | 隐私条款 | 如果智培

京ICP备05059198号-1 京公网安备 11011202003401号