" But how immeasurably more
foolish, more monstrous, would it not be for a _man_, however honest, good,
or wise, to say, "But Jehovah is greater than I!"
_May_ 8. 1824.
PLATO AND XENOPHON.--RELIGIONS OF THE GREEKS.--EGYPTIAN ANTIQUITIES.--
MILTON.--VIRGIL.
Plato's works are logical exercises for the mind. Little that is positive
is advanced in them. Socrates may be fairly represented by Plato in the
more moral parts; but in all the metaphysical disquisitions it is
Pythagoras. Xenophon's representation of his master is quite different.[1]
[Footnote 1: See p. 9. n.--ED.]
* * * * *
Observe the remarkable contrast between the religion of the tragic and
other poets of Greece. The former are always opposed in heart to the
popular divinities. In fact, there are the popular, the sacerdotal, and the
mysterious religions of Greece, represented roughly by Homer, Pindar, and
AEschylus. The ancients had no notion of a _fall_ of man, though they had of
his gradual degeneracy. Prometheus, in the old mythus, and for the most
part in AEschylus, is the Redeemer and the Devil jumbled together.
* * * * *
I cannot say I expect much from mere Egyptian antiquities.
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