The Philosophical Review/Volume 1/Review: Rohde - Psyche. Seelencult und Unsterblichkeitsglaube der Griechen
In this treatment of Greek conceptions of the spirit-world, Rohde gives us an exceedingly valuable contribution to one of the most interesting branches of Anthropology. The book is occupied with description of facts rather than with exposition of them, and is conservatively written. Hardly too much can be said in praise of the mastery of the material and of the directness of its presentation. The least satisfactory part of the book, it seems to me, is the author's account of animism in the Homeric Age. The treatment is not only scant, but fails to convey even a definite conception of what Homeric animistic notions were. The author disagrees with both Nagelsbach and Grotemeyer in his interpretation of the Homeric personality; it is not the body, with Nagelsbach, which is the man, nor is it the Psyche, with Grotemeyer. This contradiction in Homer, who sometimes speaks of the body as the real person and opposed to the Psyche, and again, of the Psyche on its way to Hades as the man proper, is reconciled by the author on the ground that there are two "selves." Both the body and the Psyche may be called the "self." Man has a double personality, viz. the man visible to sense, and the invisible self, which is set free at death. This Psyche dwells in the living man like a guest, a second ego. As a parallel to this, the author cites the conceptions among primitive peoples of a double life in man. So, too, the Roman genius in its original meaning was a second "self." This interpretation has much in its favor; the metaphysical difficulty which such duality might offer would, of course, have nothing to do with its historical correctness as an Homeric doctrine. The author points out that fire, which was the customary instrument for destroying the body in the Homeric Age, was used merely as the most rapid means of disposing of the visible alter ego, and this left the Psyche free to pass into the Beyond. Originally, however, fire was employed out of fear of the return of the spirit; but the body being burned, there was nothing for it to return to. This idea of burning the body, out of fear of the return of the spirit and its power to harm the living, had been lost sight of in the Homeric Age, — an idea prevalent among other primitive peoples as well as pre-Homeric Greeks. As long as the body remained, the "second self" might return; hence the undevoted wife of Hermotimos burned his body while his Psyche was away on a soothsaying journey. Before Homer, there was a time when the Greeks believed that, after the separation of the Psyche from the body, its intercourse with the upper world did not for some time cease; hence there arose a soul-cult which concerned a period beyond the burial or cremation. This belief found an echo even at the end of the classical period (cf. Aristotle, Eth. Nic. 1100, 10 ff.). For Homer, however, when the soul has once passed to Hades, it is of no further moment. Furthermore, Homer knows of no class of the wicked which is punished in Hades, unless, perhaps, it is the perjurers.
Among those who do not suffer separation of body and soul are those who, without dying, go to the Elysian Fields, beyond Okeanos or the Fortunate Islands. Rohde finds this union of the body and Psyche necessary, because, as he says in connection with Odys. iv. 565, "Only in this way can the departed have the feeling and enjoyment of life" (p. 64), — an argument which is worthless; for there is no evidence that the life in the Fortunate Insulæ is meant to be a continuation of the present one either in degree or kind. With minor exceptions, this entire chapter on the Islands of the Blessed is written with life, movement, and accuracy; it is sometimes picturesque, though perhaps (as pages 77 ff.) not quite free from diffuseness. It seems to me that the author, in his treatment of Hesiod (cf. pp. 92, 101 ff.), does not make sufficient allowance for the poet's subjective element, his phantasy, etc., but regards him too much as merely giving expression to the popular beliefs of his time as a reporter. What Rohde says (pp. 268 ff.) on the allegorical interpretation of Greek mythology is refreshing; the finding everywhere in Greek divinities and ritual references to processes in nature, has, before and since Bacon's Wisdom of the Ancients, gone to incredible excesses. This finds good illustration in the varied interpretations which have been put on Demeter's daughter Kore.
The author discusses in this first half of his work: Homeric Belief and Cult in reference to the Spirit-world; the Islands of the Blessed; Gods of Caverns; Heroes; Soul-Cult; the Mysteries of Eleusis; Conceptions of the Future Life. On this range of subjects Rohde's book has, as far as I know, no single work as a predecessor; and in this general field it has no rival in importance since the appearance of Nägelsbach's Homerischt Theologie and Nachhomerische Theologie des griechischen Volksglaubens, some forty years ago.
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
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