to subject everything to the test of his own intelligence, never found finer expression than in the verse which assigns the palm of moral perfection to him who has the courage to think for himself.[1] Pindar, the most religious poet of antiquity, applies the test of reason to the established myths of Hellas when he refuses to credit such legends as depict the gods in unseemly situations, or under the influence of degrading passions.[2] Xenophanes thought that the claims of Religion and Morality could be best advanced by cleansing the moral atmosphere of the gods whose recorded lives were so flagrantly in opposition to the dictates of purity, reason, and honour; a strain of criticism which found its most striking and notorious expression in the famous Second and Third Books of Plato's "Republic," but which had not been without its exponents among more whole-hearted adherents of the national Religion. But, meanwhile, the national Religion, as embodied, at least, in the national liturgy, had been coming to terms with the growing strength of Philosophy, and the vestibules of the Temple at Delphi were inscribed with those famous philosophical apophthegms, whose presence there subsequently enabled Plutarch to claim that Apollo was not only a God and a Seer, but a Philosopher.[3] The popular morality of the days of Socrates, which supplied his cross-examinees with(Hesiod: Works and Days, 293.)—It is not surprising that Aristotle quotes this verse with approval, or that it commended itself to the genius of Roman writers. (Cf. Livy, xxii. 29; Cicero: Pro Cluentio, c. 31.)]apud Delphos, 385 B.D.]
Page:The religion of Plutarch, a pagan creed of apostolic times; an essay (IA religionofplutar00oakeiala).pdf/44
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